Fittest Quotes & Sayings

If any of my competitors were drowning, I'd stick a hose in their mouth and turn on the water. It is ridiculous to call this an industry. This is not. This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I'll kill 'em, and I'm going to kill 'em before they kill me. You're talking about the American way - of survival of the fittest. — Ray Kroc

I thought of Sammy Glick rocking in his cradle of hate, malnutrition, prejudice, suspicions, amorality, the anarchy of the poor; I thought of him as a mangy puppy in a dog-eat-dog world. I was modulating my hate for Sammy Glick from the personal to the societal. I no longer even hated Rivington Street but the idea of Rivington Street, all Rivington Streets of all nationalities allowed to pile up in cities like gigantic dung heaps smelling up the world, ambitions growing out of filth and crawling away like worms. I saw Sammy Glick on a battlefield where every soldier was his own cause, his own army and his own flag, and I realized that I had singled him out not because he had been born into the world anymore selfish, ruthless and cruel than anybody else, even though he had become all three, but because in the midst of a war that was selfish, ruthless and cruel Sammy was proving himself the fittest and the fiercest and the fastest. — Budd Schulberg

People like the robber barons assumed that the doctrine of the survival of the fittest authenticated them as deserving power. You know, "I'm the richest. Therefore, I'm the best. God's in his heaven, etc." And that reaction of the robber barons was so irritating to people that it made it unfashionable to think of an economy as an ecosystem. But the truth is that it is a lot like an ecosystem. And you get many of the same results. — Charlie Munger

Carnegie believed in the survival of the fittest. He believed in Social Darwinism. He believed that you had to give an opportunity to the fittest, who were going to survive, to the fittest to rise themselves as high as they could. — David Nasaw

War has no longer the justification that it makes for the survival of the fittest; it involves the survival of the less fit. The idea that the struggle between nations is a part of the evolutionary law of man's advance involves a profound misreading of the biological analogy.
The warlike nations do not inherit the earth; they represent the decaying human element.... — Norman Angell

In business, politics and in life in general competition means the survival of the fittest — Bangambiki Habyarimana

People with good memories are liable to be crushed by the weight of their suffering. Only those with bad memories, the fittest to survive, can live on. - Lu Xun — Peter Hessler

survival of the fittest" - which was first coined by the economist Herbert Spencer — Douglas Brinkley

It was Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who coined the phrase Survival of the Fittest. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Why do some die and some live? The answer was clearly, that on the whole the best fitted live. From the effects of disease the most healthy escaped; from enemies, the strongest, swiftest, or the most cunning; from famine, the best hunters or those with the best digestion; and so on. Then it suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain-that is, the fittest would survive. — Alfred Russel Wallace

In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes. — Alfred Russel Wallace

We don't woo our wives with clubs. We don't leave old folks on ice floes. And maybe the time has come to quit diving into rip tides to save people we don't know. We've outgrown a lot of survival-of-the-fittest strategies, and risking our lives for strangers might be one of them. — Christopher McDougall

Richard looked up at the beautiful, big pines spreading over them, illuminated in the firelight. A spark of understanding lit in his mind. He saw the branches stretched out with murderous intent in a years-long struggle to reach the sunlight and dispatch its neighbors with its shade. Success would give space for its offspring, many of which would also shrivel in the shade of the parent. Several close neighbors of the big pine were withered and weak, victims all. It was true. The design of nature was success by murder. — Terry Goodkind

That's when it struck me: how gorgeous we all were, even with cellulite (saw a lot of that) and stretch marks, scars and tattoos. Let me just say this, not single body was perfect, not even the fittest of women there. — Justina Chen

The fittest time to corrupt a man's wife is when she's fallen out with her husband. — William Shakespeare

We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a good working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should elevate itself to a higher order. — Mario Cuomo

The man who accepts the laissez-faire doctrine would allow his garden to grow wild so that roses might fight it out with the weeds and the fittest might survive. — John Ruskin

Well, biology today as I see it has an amiable look - quite different from the 19th-century view that the whole arrangement of nature is hostile, 'red in tooth and claw.' That came about because people misread Darwin's 'survival of the fittest.' — Lewis Thomas

The infinitesimal seedlings became a forest of trees that grew courteously, correcting the distances between themselves as they shaped themselves to the promptings of available light and moisture, tempering the climate and the temperaments of the Scots, as the driest land became moist and the wettest land became dry, seedlings finding a mean between extremes, and the trees constructing a moderate zone for themselves even into what I would have called tundra, until I understood the fact that Aristotle taught, while walking in a botanic garden, that the middle is fittest to discern the extremes. ("Interim") — William S. Wilson

The fittest, not the richest, make the most enviable mark. Pampered sons of plutocrats may shine for a time in society, but not in the world of affairs and of service unless they rip off their coats and get to work early and stay late. To be born with a golden spoon in the mouth is more of a handicap than a help in attaining worthwhile success in this age. — B.C. Forbes

The fittest animal survives the jungle.
The weakest animal dies even if protected. — Matshona Dhliwayo

For many years eagerly thought by your enemy to destroying your life, it's all one second of mastery for you to save your life from his deadly plans, for you to survive. — Auliq Ice

Survival of the fittest is over. Get over it. We need survival of the wisest. — Deepak Chopra

I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, natural selection.
(Letter to A. R. Wallace July 1866) — Charles Darwin

As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king's firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. The rule of succession is not a formula for identifying the best ruler, it is a formula for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict. — J.M. Coetzee

A church should be a camp of soldiers, not an hospital of invalids. But there is exceedingly much difference between what ought be and what is, and consequently many of God's people are in so sad a state that the very fittest prayer for them is for revival. — Charles Spurgeon

Homosexuality is the most beautiful aspect of humanity. For its existence is proof that altruism is natural; it is to demonstrate that the theory of the "survival of the fittest" can only apply to the species as a whole, and that reproduction is insufficient to secure our place in the great jungle of life, which means being nice is a more stable evolutionary strategy than making kids; and if the homosexual is attracted to religion or to art - or, in smaller societies, to shamanism or caring for other people's children - is this not due to his or her search for purpose? If so, then what we call purpose must be something that encompasses all modes of life. What we call love must be greater than child rearing or caring for a mate. — Anthony Marais

The law is the survival of the fittest ... The law is not the survival of the 'better' or the 'stronger,' if we give to those words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival. — Herbert Spencer

After Napoleon's 1815 defeat at Waterloo, Europeans had created nation-states in the image and likeness of Napoleon. The new states became the foci of popular affection, even worship. All organized themselves as Napoleon had France, and as Hegel had prescribed, with every house numbered so that bureaucratic government could pass its science to and collect sustenance from each. The states became the purveyors of education and sources of authority. They fostered the myth that people within their borders formed distinct races with different geniuses and destinies. All partook of Charles Darwin's ideology that life is an evolutionary struggle in which the fittest survive. — Angelo M. Codevilla

It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change. — Leon C. Megginson

As for business, we agree that it is a hard, cold-blooded game. Survival of the fittest. Dog eat dog. The fact that about eighty-five per cent of the dogs have recently been eaten by the other dogs perhaps explains what long ago we noticed about business: that it had a strong smell of boloney. If dog continues to eat dog, there will be only one dog left, and he will be sick to his stomach. — E.B. White

There's a misconception that survival of the fittest means survival of the most aggressive. The adjective 'Darwinian' used to refer to ruthless competition; you used to read that in business journals. But that's not what Darwinian means to a biologist; it's whatever leads to reproductive success. — Steven Pinker

In 2007, my life changed forever. I signed on 'Tashan,' a full-on glamorous masala movie, with two of the hottest and fittest actors around: Akshay Kumar and Saif Ali Khan. And me, rising out of the sea like a Bond girl, wearing nothing but a green bikini. I had nightmares of how my love handles would be on display for the whole world to see. — Kareena Kapoor Khan

Loyalty cannot be too liberally insisted upon. Altruism in nature remains an exception. It poses a puzzle, being in prima facie conflict with the survival of the fittest and most selfish. — Peter Birks

I have always striven to fix beauty in wood, stone, glass or pottery, in oil or watercolor by using whatever seemed fittest for the expression of beauty, that has been my creed. — Louis Comfort Tiffany

Evolution works through this principle: the survival of the fittest. One of the essential elements of Christian discipleship demands that we work for this principle: the survival of the weakest and the gentlest. — Ronald Rolheiser

Bankruptcy cleans out the system. What's wrong with that? South
Korea went through this in the late 1990s. They didn't have anyone
to bail them out, and they had to go through the pain. Sweden did
it in the early 1990s. Mexico did it. Russia did it. The list goes on
and on. Competent people take over the assets from incompetent
people and rebuild from a solid base. Business has always been survival
of the fittest and Darwinism at its best. After all, this is what capitalism
is all about. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Satan's survival-of-the-fittest system appears to work- in the short run. But the great controversy is about the long run. — Jack Provonsha

What takes its place is very dry education. And the tools that actually can teach you - singing and playing, learning how to participate with other people, spiritual richness - are replaced with a big emphasis on how to memorize things. That's such an incomplete education. Survival of the fittest used to mean being bigger and stronger. — Wynton Marsalis

Market economy can only mean survival of the fittest — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Survival has never really been the province of the fittest. Merely the hungriest. — Anonymous

It obeys none of the natural laws of hereditary and environmental change, pays no attention to the survival of the fittest, positively sneers at any attempt on the part of man to work out a rational life cycle, is possibly immortal, unquestionably immoral, evidences anabolism but not katabolism, ruts, spawns, and breeds but does not reproduce, lays no eggs, builds no nests, seeks but does not find, wanders but does not rest. — Charles Grandison Finney

... if we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted. In order to make the method of selection by elimination work, and to ensure that only the fittest theories survive, their struggle for life must be made severe for them. — Karl R. Popper

When most of us hear the phrase, 'survival of the fittest,' we assume it originated with Charles Darwin. It did not. The phrase doesn't exist anywhere in Darwin's first edition of 'Origin of the Species.' — Joel A. Barker

Boy, there are people who conquered half the world, slaughtered whole populations, wiped cultures off the face of the planet, and you know what history calls them? Heroes! Kings, presidents, champions, explorers. You think America was settled by white men because the Indians invited us her? No, we took this land because we were stronger, and that's how every page of human history is written. It's just our nature. We're a predator species, top of the food chain. Survival of the fittest is written in our blood, it's stenciled on every gene of our DNA. The strong take and the strong make, and the weak are there only to help them do it. End of story. — Jonathan Maberry

The resolution of revolutions is selection by conflict within the scientific community of the fittest way to practice future science. The net result of a sequence of such revolutionary selections, separated by periods of normal research, is the wonderfully adapted set of instruments we call modern scientific knowledge. — Thomas Kuhn

We are all in the middle of nature beauty contest. — Toba Beta

There's no such things as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn't matter whether a solution's optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternative. — Peter Watts

The survival of the fittest is the ageless law of nature, but the fittest are rarely the strong. The fittest are those endowed with the qualifications for adaptation, the ability to accept the inevitable and conform to the unavoidable, to harmonize with existing or changing conditions. — Dave Smalley

What was it with women and pushing men's buttons?
I get that a woman wants to look attractive. News flash: you already do. We see it. But apparently to women, owning their own beauty isn't enough. They arm all the weapons in their arsenal to gain the attention of every Y chromosome within a ten-mile radius. Why do they go to all the trouble? Validation.
Meanwhile, biology dictates survival of the fittest; battles ensue, wars are fought, and somewhere amid all the carnage, a victor emerges to claim his female. All because said female just wanted to go out and feel pretty that night. — Kat Bastion

Now the guy that got to the top, the CEO, would obviously be stupid to have a number two guy who was a lot smarter than he is. So by definition, since he's a survivor and he got to the top and he isn't that brilliant, his number two guy is going to always be a little worse than he is. So, as time goes on, it's anti-Darwinism, the survival of the un- fittest. — Carl Icahn

If theft is advantageous to everyone who succeeds at it, and adultery is a good strategy, at least for males, for increasing presence in the gene pool, why do we feel they are wrong? Shouldn't the only morality that evolution produces be the kind Bill Clinton had - being sorry you got caught? — Robert J. Sawyer

As I have discovered by examining my past, I started out as a child. Coincidentally, so did my brother. My mother did not put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak: she gave me a younger brother named Russell, who taught me what was meant by 'survival of the fittest.' — Bill Cosby

That's the problem with survival of the fittest ... the corpse at your fett. That little inconvenience. — Wally Lamb

We are not the survival of the fittest. We are the survival of the nurtured. — Louis Cozolino

Colonialism in Africa was inevitable since the fittest and most creative person was the one that would be destined to lead. — S.A. David

Respected political and military leaders saw the world as a Darwinian battleground, where the fittest race would emerge triumphant from a savage fight to the death. — Paul Ham

There were two choices in life. Survive or succumb. And most people weren't even conscious of the path they chose. Because they chose for all the wrong reasons. Love, principles, dreams, desire. The world hadn't changed. It had always been survival of the fittest. — Claire Merle

We no longer have natural selection. We have unnatural selection. Survival of the fittest has been replaced by survival of the fakest. — Maureen Dowd

I'm loyal to a fault - even though I've been to hell and back with Vince McMahon, I would never to do anything to hurt him. But it's also survival of the fittest out there. — Hulk Hogan

America does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions . . . . accepts the lesson with calmness ... is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms ... perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house ... perceives that it waits a little while in the door ... that it was fittest for its days ... that its action has descended to the stalwart and wellshaped heir who approaches ... and that he shall be fittest for his days. — Walt Whitman

The embryological record is almost always abbreviated in accordance with the tendency of nature (to be explained on the principle of survival of the fittest) to attain her needs by the easiest means. — Francis Maitland Balfour

If I read not amiss, this powerful race will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond. And can any one doubt that the results of this competition of races will be the 'survival of the fittest?' — Josiah Strong

The goblins of the city may hold committees to divide a single potato, but the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one's stomach than of one's nation. — Catherynne M Valente

Laissez-faire, says the professor, when it often means bind and gag that the strongest may work his will. It is a plea for the survival of the fittest - for the strongest male to take possession of the herd by a process of extermination. — Theodore Roosevelt

The foremost watchman on the peak announces his news. It is the truest word ever spoken, and the phrase will be th fittest, most musical, and the unerring voice of the world for that time. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The person who is worthiest to live, is fittest to die. — Samuel Richardson

Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and eventually turns to use. — Herbert Spencer

The Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest has been substituted by a philosophy of the survival of the slickest. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I know it's not good to be weak and helpless. But I don't think it's good to be too strong either. In our society, they talk about survival of the fittest. But we're not animals. We're human. — Natsuki Takaya

I see it now.
There are no rules. It's survival of the fittest — Lauren DeStefano

Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best. — Thomas Huxley

Our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth marketing, in the lifetimes of many generation; these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of thee survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our arm-chairs of an afternoon-the most favoured alternative method. — J.L. Austin

Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors its worst members. — James O'Toole

As man becomes more technologically advanced, his barbarity becomes even more lethal — Bangambiki Habyarimana

The key word is flexibility, the ability to adapt constantly. Darwin said it clearly. People thought that he mainly talked about survival of the fittest. What he said was that the species that survive are usually not the smartest or the strongest, but the ones most responsive to change. So being attentive to customers and potential partners is my best advice
after, of course, perseverance and patience. — Philippe Kahn

If evolution was worth its salt, it should've evolved something better than 'survival of the fittest.' I think a better idea would be 'survival of the wittiest.' At least, that way, creatures that didn't survive could've died laughing. — Lily Tomlin

Animals that live in large peaceful societies seem to violate the laws of evolution (such as competition and survival of the fittest), but only until you learn a bit more about evolution. — Jonathan Haidt

Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape. — Pope Francis

Is it not heavenly irony that God pressed the headman's sword of morals into the hands of the newspaper writers? Perhaps the great God Pan thought they would be the fittest to handle the sword, since they are so intimately associated with mental prostitution. — Various

We do not accept that human society should be constructed on the basis of a savage principle of the survival of the fittest — Thabo Mbeki

I bowl my best when I am fittest and the best way to get fit is to bowl. That's how you get your rhythm. You cannot really find a rhythm by bowling in the nets. — Brett Lee

When I played ball, I didn't play for fun ... It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a contest and everything that implies, a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest. — Ty Cobb

In societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization. Some men make love every day; others five of six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market. — Michel Houellebecq

When you become an animal, a vulture, in the ghetto, as I had become, you enter a world of animals and vultures. It becomes truly the survival of only the fittest. — Malcolm X

Never Give Up, Just Follow Your Dreams ... — Muhammad Imran Hasan

You may elect the most fittest but God selects d fittest — Ikechukwu Joseph

Weakness with watchfulness will stand, when strength with too much confidence fails. Weakness, with acknowledgement of it, is the fittest seat and subject for God to perfect his strength in; for consciousness of our infirmities drives us out of ourselves to him in whom our strength lies. — Richard Sibbes

In Beauvoir's experience Darwin was way wrong. The fittest didn't survive, they were killed by the idiocy of their neighbors, who continued to bumble along oblivious. — Louise Penny

The very comprehensibility of the world points to an intelligence behind the world. Indeed, science would be impossible if our intelligence were not adapted to the intelligibility of the world. The match between our intelligence and the intelligibility of the world is no accident. Nor can it properly be attributed to natural selection, which places a premium on survival and reproduction and has no stake in truth or conscious thought. Indeed, meat-puppet robots are just fine as the output of a Darwinian evolutionary process. — William A. Dembski

The law of evolution is that the strongest survives!' 'Yes, and the strongest, in the existence of any social species, are those who are most social. In human terms, most ethical ... There is no strength to be gained from hurting one another. Only weakness. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be creamed? — Solomon Short

In such a government as ours no man is appointed to an office because he is the fittest for it
nor hardly in any other government
because there are so many connections and dependencies to be studied. — Samuel Johnson

It is the observer of the pun that makes it, my dear Brumm. Of course, when the word is distorted, as in Evilution, the most preoccupied notice it, but in this instance which you try to fasten upon me the crime is yours. There is nothing more contrary to the Evolutionary will than puns. Bloodshed and desolation follow in their wake. Their English heyday, which was in the reign of James I, caused the great civil war; in France they flourished most rankly under Louis XV, and produced the French Revolution. I have considered puns, and apart altogether from their hateful effect, as shown in history, it is certain that they are quite unevolutionary, because I, the fittest of men, am unable to make them. You will consult your own welfare, and that of the nation, Brougham, by refraining in future. — John Davidson

Admonished for his lack of familiarity with twentieth century science, Sundar Singh said, 'What is science?' 'Natural selection and survival of the fittest,' he was told. 'Ah,' Sundar Singh replied, 'but I am more interested in divine selection and the survival of the unfit. — Sadhu Sundar Singh

This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. — Charles Darwin

Prison is the only place, where Darwin's Theory of Evolution may seem to work. Survival of the fittest does only work, where the fittest is defined as the most loving. — Raphael Zernoff

People who think of themselves as tough-minded and realistic, among them influential political leaders and businessmen as well as go-getters and hustlers of smaller caliber, tend to take it for granted that human nature is selfish and that life is a struggle in which only the fittest may survive. According to this philosophy, the basic law by which man must live, in spite of his surface veneer of civilization, is the law of the jungle. The "fittest" are those who can bring to the struggle superior force, superior cunning, and superior ruthlessness. — S.I. Hayakawa

Endeavour to appreciate life while you experience it, for some will never experience life again, because they are six feet inside the grave. — Auliq Ice

Deep caring about each other's fate does seem to be on the decline, but I do not believe that New Age narcissism is much to blame. The external causes of our moral indifference are a fragmented mass society that leaves us isolated and afraid, an economic system that puts the rights of capital before the rights of people, and a political process that makes citizens into ciphers.

These are the forces that allow, even encourage, unbridled competition, social irresponsibility, and the survival of the financially fittest. The executives who brought down the major corporations by taking indecent sums off the top while wage earners of modest means lost their retirement accounts were clearly more influenced by capitalist amorality than by some New Age guru. — Parker J. Palmer