Generation of Greatness (1957)
Context: In thinking about what the human animal might have gone through in the evolutionary process, have you wondered how some of the small changes which must have occurred could have had survival value? Haven't you wondered how they could have survived, when, in all of our experimental work every small change we make dies? … How many changes must have occurred in the human eye, occurred and died, before one change came along — an apparently trivial change … that gave the whole animal a significant increase in its power to perceive and hunt down its enemies and find its food. This is the kind of change that survives.
“It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.”
“An obsessive creature, constantly dominated by one kind of motive, would not survive.”
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 168.
Context: Creatures really have divergent and conflicting desires. Their distinct motives are not (usually) wishes for survival or for means-to-survival, but for various particular things to be done and obtained while surviving. And these can always conflict. Motivation is fundamentally plural. It must be so because, in evolution, all sorts of contingincies and needs arise, calling for all sorts of different responses. An obsessive creature, constantly dominated by one kind of motive, would not survive.
“Ideals survive through change. They die through inertia in the face of challenge.”
European Parliament debates http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+CRE+20050623+ITEM-004+DOC+XML+V0//EN&language=EN&query=INTERV&detail=4-010
Speech to the European Parliament outlining the priorities of the British Presidency, 23 June 2005.
2000s
Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 5 (p. 53)
“The kind of person that thanks another person never survives. Have you learned nothing?”
Source: Dreamfever
“Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training”
Siri (Khun Sirinart, a Thai businesswoman) in Ch. 15, p. 70
The Ringmaster (1991)
The earliest known appearance of this basic statement is a paraphrase of Darwin in the writings of Leon C. Megginson, a management sociologist at Louisiana State University. [[Megginson, Leon C., Lessons from Europe for American Business, Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, 1963, 44(1), 3-13, p. 4]] Megginson's paraphrase (with slight variations) was later turned into a quotation. See the summary of Nicholas Matzke's findings in "One thing Darwin didn't say: the source for a misquotation" http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/one-thing-darwin-didnt-say at the Darwin Correspondence Project. The statement is incorrectly attributed, without any source, to Clarence Darrow in Improving the Quality of Life for the Black Elderly: Challenges and Opportunities : Hearing before the Select Committee on Aging, House of Representatives, One Hundredth Congress, first session, September 25, 1987 (1988).
Misattributed
As quoted in Improving the Quality of Life for the Black Elderly: Challenges and Opportunities : Hearing before the Select Committee on Aging, House of Representatives, One Hundredth Congress, first session, September 25, 1987 (1988)
This quote's earliest known source is from Leon C. Megginson (see Charles Darwin)
Misattributed
