“Think of a frog as a functional machine designed to produce baby frogs. This is the Darwinian view, and is really what evolution is all about. In order to succeed, the frog has to stay alive long enough to grow up and get pregnant or get some female frog pregnant. That means it has to do two things. It has to eat. And it has to avoid being eaten.”
Source: Man Plus (1976), Chapter 5, “Monster Becoming Mortal Again” (p. 50)
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Frederik Pohl 36
American science fiction writer and editor 1919–2013Related quotes
“Boys throw stones at frogs in fun, but the frogs do not die in fun, but in earnest.”
Variant translation: Boys throw stones at frogs for fun, but the frogs don't die for "fun", but in sober earnest.
As quoted by Plutarch, Moralia, xii. 66
“I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog.”
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1865)
By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Variant: There's nothing deeper than love. In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the princesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs.
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Which are the most crafty, Water or Land Animals?, 7
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Source: Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time
“As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.
But the frogs die in earnest.”
Part 8, Chapter 10 (p. 196)
Source: Fiction, The Female Man (1975)
September 24, 2009 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34746_Glenn_Beck_Lies_About_LGF&only
“The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog”
Under the Microscope (1872)
Context: The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog; not though in that stage of development he should puff and blow himself till he bursts with windy adulation at the heels of the laureled ox.