Quotes & Sayings About Adapting

Yes, being black is a full-time job: sometimes you are invisible, other times you are hyper-visible," he says. "Sometimes you are welcome, other times you are not. The thermostat is always moving and you have to keep adapting to find some comfort level. Richard Pryor used to talk about going to Africa and people there telling him he was white. Even though he was black, he just wasn't black enough. — Paul Beatty

There is another viewpoint that must be stated without equivocation: if Muslims want to immigrate to open and developed societies in order to better themselves, then it is they who must expect to do the adapting. We no longer allow Jews to run separate Orthodox courts in their communities, or permit Mormons to practice polygamy or racial discrimination or child marriage. That is the price of "inclusion," and a very reasonable one. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I am like the fish in the aquarium, thinking in a different language, adapting to a life that's not my natural habitat. I am the people in the other cars, each with his or her own story, but passing too quickly to be noticed or understood. — David Levithan

Planning is helpful. If you don't know what you want, you'll seldom get it. But, no matter how well you plan, you will fare better if you expect the unexpected. The unexpected, by nature, comes unseen, unthought, unenvisioned. All you can do is plan to go unplanned, prepare to be unprepared, make going with the flow part of your agenda, for the most successful among us envision, plan, and prepare, but cast all aside as needed, while those who are unable to go with the flow often suffer, if they survive. — David W. Jones

Language, for the individual consciousness, lies on the borderline between oneself and the other. The word in language is half someone else's. It becomes 'one's owns' only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a natural and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people's mouths, in other people's contexts, serving other people's intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one's own. — Mikhail Bakhtin

...if we run toward our fears, they lose their power and ultimately disappear"

"I think this is one of the giant lessons in adapting to age without losing your mind: we must let go of what was and begin accepting what is"

"'fate loves the fearless.' There is no better time to be fearless than in your fifties; if you really put your mind and your energy into it, you can make amazing things happen. — Tracey Jackson

Recalling, some time later, what I had felt at the time, I distinguished the impression of having been held for a moment in her mouth, myself, naked, without any of the social attributes which belonged equally to her other playmates and, when she used my surname, to my parents, accessories of which her lips - by the effort she made, a little after her father's manner, to articulate the words to which she wished to give a special emphasis - had the air of stripping, of divesting me, like the skin from a fruit of which one can swallow only the pulp, while her glance, adapting itself to the same new degree of intimacy as her speech, fell on me also more directly and testified to the consciousness, the pleasure, even the gratitude that it felt by accompanying itself with a smile. — Marcel Proust

The story of Harold Fry and his unlikely pilgrimage began as an afternoon play for radio. For many years, I have been writing plays and adapting novels for 'Woman's Hour' and the 'Classic' series. So this was originally a three-hander play, broadcast one sunny afternoon on BBC Radio 4. — Rachel Joyce

I'm concerned that young people, far too often, abdicate their responsibilities of learning and adapting and give that over to people who may not always have their best interests at heart. — Len Elmore

It displeases me to have some creature think that he can foresee and profit from my desire, automatically adapting himself to what he supposes to be my taste. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Satisfaction involves an active pursuit- it is the emotional reward we get after adapting to a new situation or solving a novel problem. — Mark Andrews

Evolution is all about passing on the genome to the next generation, adapting and surviving through generation after generation. From an evolutionary point of view, you and I are like the booster rockets designed to send the genetic payload into the next level of orbit and then drop off into the sea. — Harvey V. Fineberg

Entrepreneurs don't write a 100-page business plan and execute it one time; they're always experimenting and adapting based on what they learn. — Thomas Friedman

The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning. — Wassily Kandinsky

I believe in books. I believe more in 'cross-media' - how characters are adapting across mediums. — Bing Gordon

Relationships are two layers of conversations. Adapting and also speaking your mind. — Dee Henderson

Rwanda is a very open and free country. Key to our recovery as a nation has a range of grassroots, citizen-centered polices we call "homegrown solutions." The idea that Rwanda is highly controlled from the center belies the reality, which is that citizens in every village have a powerful say in how things get done. We prize accountability and Rwandans are quickly adapting themselves to the possibilities of a digital economy. — Paul Kagame

Making a movie is like a chess game. It's about constantly changing patterns, adapting to new things. It's not just black and white, as you know. — Tom Cruise

Species evolve exactly as if they were adapting as best they could to a changing world, and not at all as if they were moving toward a set goal. — George Gaylord Simpson

The mark of a living thing is to be involved in opposites (impossibilities): the living cell that has to be continually adapting itself to stay alive, with its identity. — Nicholas Mosley

Writing a memoir is such a private, personal experience that it's intimidating to think of adapting it for television. — Caitlin Doughty

There are hardly any truths upon which we always remain agreed, and still fewer objects of pleasure which we do not change every hour, I do not know whether there is a means of giving fixed
rules for adapting discourse to the inconstancy of our caprices. — Blaise Pascal

I'm adapting quite well to English football with the same will I've always had. — Sergio Aguero

The heads of the Church ought therefore to imitate Christ in being affable, adapting Himself to women, laying His hands on children, and washing His disciples' feet, that they also should do the same to their brethren. But we are such, that we seem to go beyond the pride even of the great ones of this world; as to the command of Christ, either not understanding it, or setting it at nought. Like princes we seek hosts to go before us, we make ourselves awful and difficult of access, especially to the poor, neither approaching them, nor suffering them to approach us. — Thomas Aquinas

We are always people that are in the making, constantly adapting to accommodate the roads we walk. As we learn, it changes us. As we go about our course, we grow, and prune everything around us; friends, beliefs, desires. Our past experiences plant the seeds needed for our future roads, with all its turns, speed, and treachery. — Kat Lahr

Public relations, in this country, is the art of adapting big business to a democracy so that the people have confidence that they are being well served and at the same time the business has freedom to serve them well. — Arthur W. Page

Adapting a book is essentially a collaboration, whether the author is alive or dead. — James Franco

I like being in focus, in the moment, changing and adapting and creating and advancing a scene. — Dominic Cooper

Happiness for the average person may be said to flow largely from common sense - adapting one-self to circumstances - and a sense of humor. — Beatrice Lillie

He has a way of walking through conventions of that kind as if they did not exist, and being so much himself that pretty soon people begin adapting themselves to him. — Wallace Stegner

I still feel haunted,' she said. 'I thought it would go away. I thought if I faced it, it would all go away.'
'It doesn't go away. Ever. But you get better at it.'
'At what?'
'At being haunted,' Avasarala said. — James S.A. Corey

I said nothing about men adapting themselves to Mars. Have you ever considered the possibility of Mars meeting us half-way? — Arthur C. Clarke

Imagining themes that are specific to coating lines, shapes, shades, thoughts, the decoration of our homes and the objects of utility or pure pleasure, adapting its purpose in a material-specific way to metal or wood, marble or fabric - it is, without any doubt, an absorbing occupation. — Emile Galle

If you accept failure as learning,
it's not discouraging to keep adapting until you find success. — Martin Zwilling

Acquiring new skills and adapting to complex, uncertain environments isn't easy, though. It requires persistent attention and near-constant effort to maintain a trajectory of growth. As such, it's easy to grow tired or lose your drive. However, when you stop growing, you start dying. In much the same way that an organization needs to be persistently innovative in order to maintain market share, individuals must make a personal commitment to lifelong personal innovation through skill development, risk-taking, and experimentation in order to avoid stagnation. The seeds of tomorrow's brilliance are planted in the soil of today's activity. — Todd Henry

Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance. It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back even from the most difficult times ... Your ability to thrive depends, in the end, on your attitude to your life circumstances. Take everything in stride with grace, putting forth energy when it is needed, yet always staying calm inwardly. — Ping Fu

With her, too, I danced more easily now, in a freer and more sprightly fashion, even though not so buoyantly and more self-consciously than with the other. Hermine had me lead, adapting herself as softly and lightly as the leaf of a flower, and with her, too, I now experienced all these delights that now advanced and now took wing. She, too, now exhaled the perfume of woman and love, and her dancing, too, sang with intimate tenderness the lovely and enchanting song of sex. — Hermann Hesse

Probably the most useful thing I can do as secretary of state is to assist the president in adapting and renewing the transnational institutions that were created after World War II. — Warren Christopher

I can have my day carefully planned, but if someone wakes up with a cough or a sniffle, then everything changes. Thinking quickly and adapting without grumbling are essential skills to learn, in my opinion. — Susanna Kearsley

I have experience and I am employing it in the service of a Chilean road for Chile's problems. We always take advantage of experience wherever it comes from, but adapting it to our reality. I am putting it to use in a Chilean way, for the problems of Chile. We are not anyone's mental colonists. — Salvador Allende

You have to keep adapting to the times. If you kind of go with it, it can kind of fun. — Billy Corgan

Being Missional means actually doing mission right where you are. Missional means adopting the posture of a missionary, learning and adapting to the culture around you while remaining Biblically sound. — Ed Stetzer

In my head, scenes are shot from certain angles; there are camera pans, all of that kind of stuff. Converting those visuals to comic format was mostly a matter of adapting them to the rhythm of paneling. — Chris Wooding

Unfortunately, we cannot live our lives according to the moral and religious convictions or petrified dogmas of our forebears. We have an obligation to live by our own faith, forever renewing the traditions of the past and adapting them to the demands of own time and place. — Farquhar McHarg

From my personal taste, it needed more of a visual style. It's so hard when you're adapting something that's so visually scrumptious like Mike Oeming's drawings. They're so unique to comics, but they're a voice. — Brian Michael Bendis

Adapting to our Second Adulthood is not all about the money. It requires thinking about how to find a new locus of identity or how to adjust to a spouse who stops working and who may loll, enjoying coffee and reading the paper online while you're still commuting. — Gail Sheehy

I'm used to adapting my novels for feature film - it can be challenging to cut and compress three or four hundred pages into two hours of dramatic action. — Tom Perrotta

Obviously it's easier when I' m doing the adapting myself. But my feeling is, your potential upside far outweighs the downside. Ultimately, they [moviemakers] can't change your book. Your book remains on the shelf the way you wrote it. If they make a great movie of your book, then you have the equivalent of millions and millions of dollars of advertising for your book. If the movie's not that good, that doesn't mean the book's not good. It doesn't change what you've already written. It has the potential to reach more people. — Jonathan Tropper

I'd say that Berkshire Hathaway's system is adapting to the nature of the investment problem as it really is. We've really made the money out of high quality businesses. In some cases, we bought the whole business. And in some cases, we just bought a big block of stock. But when you analyze what happened, the big money's been made in the high quality businesses. And most of the other people who've made a lot of money have done so in high quality businesses. — Charlie Munger

Writing a novel is so hard, and there are so many problems that the last thing you're thinking about is adapting this mess you have on your hands as a movie. You just want to get it to work as a novel. That's your main focus. — Maria Semple

Young people have a marvellous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances. — Samuel Butler

Nearly all great civilizations that perished did so because they had crystallized, because they were incapable of adapting themselves to new conditions, new methods, new points of view. It is as though people would rather die than change. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Sport is not about being wrapped up in cotton wool. Sport as about adapting to the unexpected and being able to modify plans at the last minute. Sport, like all life, is about taking risks. — Roger Bannister

I think all the obituaries for newspapers we're hearing are premature. Many papers are belatedly but successfully adapting to the new news environment. I — Arianna Huffington

Rule number one in adapting - control the situation at hand before it has a chance to control you. — Maggi Myers

Man is a shrewd inventor, and is ever taking the hint of a new machine from his own structure, adapting some secret of his own anatomy in iron, wood, and leather, to some required function in the work of the world. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Margaret Thatcher has shown that there is power and dignity to be won by defying the status quo and the majority rather than by adapting to them. If the British left, which she froze into immobility like Medusa, could bring itself to learn from this, then we might not have to look upon her like again. — Christopher Hitchens

The worst part of success is, to me, adapting to it. It's scary. — Kendrick Lamar

I wanted to grow in terms of making pictures, not adapting to new software and technology. But that's the game now. — Gregory Heisler

Without a conscious life-purpose a man is totally lost, drifting, adapting to events rather than creating events. Without knowing his life-purpose a man lives a weakend, impotent existence, perhaps even becoming even sexually impotent or prone to mechanical and disinterested sex. — David Deida

The pathfinders of modern thought did not derive what is good from the law ... Their role in history was not that of adapting their words and actions to the text of old documents or generally accepted doctrines: they themselves created the documents and brought about the acceptance of their doctrines. — Max Horkheimer

It felt like the first thing, but when I first started out, I got a job adapting a book by Russell Banks called 'Rule Of The Bone.' I didn't do a very good job. I didn't really know what I was doing in general, let alone how to adapt a book. — Paul Thomas Anderson

I do think a good story in a novel is fair game and there's nothing wrong with adapting that. It sometimes gets a bit facile where they think: "Let's get the next best-seller and see if we can turn it into a film." — Colin Firth

It is dancing that brings together tribes from all over North America to compete against each other [in pow wows], to share traditional similarities and differences, and to let non-aboriginal people learn about the first cultures on this continent. The dances change over the years, reflecting new generations and their influences, adapting the traditions of their grandparents and their grandparents' grandparents, to be able to exist in this rapidly evolving world.

"There will always be the elders who shake their heads at the younger generation's behaviour and teenagers who push the boundaries of traditions they have been taught. In dancing, though, everyone can be on the same beat, regardless of their fancy footwork or swirling shawls. — Lori Henry

Human reflection is chronically overrated, though, and we now suspect that our own reaction to food poisoning is in fact similar to that of rats. Garcia's findings forced comparative psychology to admit that evolution pushes cognition around, adapting it to the organism's needs. — Frans De Waal

Because [writers] Dan Weiss and David Benioff have done such a great job in adapting them, that's what we work with. It serves no purpose to anybody for actors to come onto a set with a well-thumbed copy of the source material and start querying why this or that line has been left out of the script. It's probably been left out for a good reason. — Charles Dance

Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life — William James

By the time I was doing "Kill Bill," it was so much filled with prose that, you know, I start seeing why people write a screenplay and make it more like a blueprint, because basically I had written - in "Kill Bill," I had basically written a novel, and basically every day I was adapting my novel to the screen on the fly, you know, on my feet. — Quentin Tarantino

To the other. It is the realism needed to manage the inevitable. A model of living that has broadly worked well in the West is spreading, adapting to local conditions as it goes. We should all look forward to the time when Chinese and Indian teenagers write sulky songs about the appalling dullness of suburbia. — Anonymous

I was in Los Angeles making 'Dead Again' and the producer, Lindsay Doran , asked me if I'd be interested in adapting this book, .. Austen is my favorite author and I thought, 'Well, of course, I'd be very interested, but I don't know how. I don't know where to start, A, writing a screenplay and B, sort of adapting it from a great novel. — Emma Thompson

Never jeopardize who you are for a role. Now, I'm not saying you should never change for a role, because the fun of being different characters is adapting different nuances and different parts of the character, but never jeopardize your moral compass or anything like that to have a role. — Yara Shahidi

John Hall, my geography teacher at school inspired me to a lifelong interest in geography and a curiosity about our world which has stayed with me through my life. Geography is a living, breathing subject, constantly adapting itself to change. It is dynamic and relevant. For me geography is a great adventure with a purpose. — Michael Palin

It is impossible to talk about slowing climate change without talking about reducing CO2 emissions. Equally, it is impossible to talk about adapting to climate change without considering how we will feed ourselves. And it is out of the question that we can adapt agriculture without conserving crop diversity. — Cary Fowler

Page 117 Sam says "You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they're not living, breathing people anymore. It's not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you and makes you want to cry in the wrong places and irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead. It's just something you learn to accommodate. Like adapting around a hole. I don't know. It's like you become ... a doughnut instead of a bun." page 117 — Jojo Moyes

Adapting our own perception, following rather than leading and building bridges are all keys to helping the child with autism learn. — Adele Devine

Scheffer said a new ethnic underclass of immigrants had formed, and it was much too insular, rejecting the values that knit together Dutch society and creating new, damaging social divisions. There wasn't enough insistence on immigrants adapting; teachers even questioned the relevance of teaching immigrant children Dutch history, and a whole generation of these children were being written off under a pretence of tolerance. Scheffer said there was no place in Holland for a culture that rejected the separation of church and state and denied rights to women and homosexuals. He foresaw social unrest. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Today, instead of adapting to the natural world in which we live, we've created a human environment in which we've embedded the natural world. — Diane Ackerman

Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts. — William O. Douglas

Adapting to climate change: It really is time for action ... we are on a never-ending road; this is with us for the rest of our natural lives — Joan Ruddock

design is a term that bridges theory and practice. It encompasses both a principled approach and a set of contextualized practices that are constantly adapting to circumstances. — Helen Beetham

We are so incredibly skilled at adapting to even the most hostile of environments, and so often we use those skills to be more efficient at killing each other. — Marko Kloos

Usually, the biggest problems of adapting plays into screenplays is that they stick too close to the play, and I think film is a completely different medium. I think a novel is much closer to a film ... — Arthur Miller

Rob chuckles, I'm not some sparkly-skinned, jealous, child whose sensibilities are still stuck at the turn of the twentieth century. Eve, I can adapt. If we survived the sixties I promise you we can survive learning to share the most important person in either of our long lives. — Angela Louise McGurk

The struggle for existence never gets easier. However well a species may adapt to its environment, it can never relax, because its competitors and its enemies are also adapting to their niches. Survival is a zero-sum game. — Matt Ridley

There is today perhaps no more firmly credited prejudice than this: that one knows what really constitutes the moral. Today it seems to do everyone good when they hear that society is on the way to adapting the individual to general requirements, and that the happiness and at the same time the sacrifice of the individual lies in feeling himself to be a useful member and instrument of the whole: (...) What is wanted - whether this is admitted or not - is nothing less than a fundamental remoulding, indeed weakening and abolition of the individual — Friedrich Nietzsche

To invent without scruple a new principle to every new phenomenon, instead of adapting it to the old; to overload our hypothesis with a variety of this kind, are certain proofs that none of these principles is the just one, and that we only desire, by a number of falsehoods, to cover our ignorance of the truth. — David Hume

Adapting your own book is like performing open-heart surgery on your own child. — Jonathan Tropper

God has neither form nor shape under which we can know Him; when he speaks of Himself in metaphors and similes, He is adapting Himself to our foolishness, our limited capacity. — Christina, Queen Of Sweden

In New York, I get a tremendous amount of ideas by looking at the paintings and the sculptures, adapting artistic endeavors to crafts. There is a lot of inspiration around us that we can see every day and turn into projects. — Martha Stewart

If Americans can transform Memorial Day, technically a remembrance of all our war dead ever, into the official kickoff of summer, we can handle adapting one demoralizing battle into a wholesome, chipper get-together. — Sarah Vowell

I was always pretty good at adapting to my situations. My act was never that inside, where it was like, "Okay, they're either going to get this or they're not." — Nick Swardson

We've never pulled from the toy line. We've always pulled from the mythology. What's great is there's so much mythology, so there's always stuff to pull from that. It never lines up perfectly for a movie; it's just like adapting a book or anything else, you know? But you come up with things to create, you come up with different ideas, but fundamentally the ideas always start from the mythology. — Lorenzo Di Bonaventura

The world's culture is changing, adapting. People are keeping what's good in a culture, and sweeping out the rest. — Georgie Anne Geyer

Adapting to changes represents an important characteristic of human nature, essential for the development of human society. — Eraldo Banovac

I'm always adapting, I'm always learning, and I'm always changing. — Anthony Pettis

(T)his is precisely the importance of the world-view described in the Book of Changes: there is no situation without a way out. All situations are stages of change. Therefore, even when things are most difficult we can plant the seed for a new situation that will preserve within itself the present situation, though we must be capable of adapting and finding the proper attitude. — Hellmut Wilhelm

Economic freedom is very important for women empowerment. They must be partners in economic development also. I have seen that women are very good at adapting to latest technology. We should link women and technology up-gradation. — Narendra Modi

Peck Valley would have shuddered a bit had it known the easy ethics of its mortuary artist in such debatable matters as the ownership of costly "laying-out" apparel invisible beneath the casket's lid, and the degree of dignity to be maintained in posing and adapting the unseen members of lifeless tenants to containers not always calculated with sublimest accuracy. Most distinctly Birch was lax, insensitive, and professionally undesirable; — H.P. Lovecraft

A madman overcomes it by adapting to his surroundings. You can't give up. Why die? There is always another mission; it's the missions that keep you alive. — Stephen Richards

I am suggesting here that organisms have a built-I capability of adapting to their environment. I am suggesting that to the extent that evolution occurs, it occurs at the level of the organism. This suggestion differs sharply from the thesis of the NDT, which holds that evolution occurs only at the level of the population. Organisms contain within themselves the information that enables them to develop a phenotype adaptive to a variety of environments. The adaptation can occur by a change in the genome through a genetic change triggered by the environment, or it can occur without any genetic change. — Lee Spetner