#select

Voter suppression laws, overzealous filibuster use, you name it - the Republicans use every tactic they can to stop our democracy from actually selecting the person with the most support. ↗

— Jennifer Granholm

#democracy #every #filibuster #laws #most

I bought a selection of short, romantic fiction novels, studied them, decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected. ↗

— Louise Brown

#bought #decided #fiction #figured #formula

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

#darwinism #evolution #infidelity #macro-evolution #macroevolution

Perhaps the most legitimately dispiriting thing about reciprocal altruism is that it is a misnomer. Whereas with kin selection the "goal" of our genes is to actually help another organism, with reciprocal altruism the goal is that the organism be left under the impression that we've helped; the impression alone is enough to bring the reciprocation. ↗

— Robert Wright

#evolution #natural-selection #reciprocity #nature

It looks as if the offspring have eyes so that they can see well (bad, teleological, backward causation), but that's an illusion. The offspring have eyes because their parents' eyes did see well (good, ordinary, forward causation). ↗

— Steven Pinker

#evolution #natural-selection #teleology #nature

Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that's because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection. ↗

— Richard Dawkins

#because #car #design #designer #engineer

If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be present. ↗

— Franz Boas

#emotionally #energetic #imaginative #intelligent #mankind

My show is constantly evolving... new tricks are added, old ones are dropped... so it stays fresh. But it's the randomly selected participants from the audience that make it fresh and provide some of the best comic relief. ↗

— David Copperfield

#audience #best #comic #comic relief #constantly

Few are sufficiently sensible of the importance of that economy in reading which selects, almost exclusively, the very first order of books. Why, except for some special reason, read an inferior book, at the very time you might be reading one of the highest order? ↗

— John W. Foster

#book #books #economy #except #exclusively

I'm fighting for the heart and soul of the Republican Party and I think if I win this campaign that people will take notice and the next time they select a candidate, they will look at the principles. ↗

— Doug Hoffman

#candidate #fighting #heart #i #i think