Ronald A Fisher Quotes

Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability. ~ Ronald A. Fisher

In a Fisherian world, animals are slaves to evolutionary fashion, evolving extravagant and arbitrary displays and tastes that are all "meaningless"; they do not involve anything other than perceived qualities. ~ Richard O. Prum

We are quite in danger of sending highly trained and intelligent young men out in the word with tables of erroneous numbers under their arms, and with a dense fog in the place where their brains ought to be. ~ Ronald A. Fisher

Desire for beauty will endure and undermine the desire for truth. ~ Richard O. Prum

It will be noticed that the fundamental theorem proved above bears some remarkable resemblances to the second law of thermodynamics. Both are properties of populations, or aggregates, true irrespective of the nature of the units which compose them; both are statistical laws; each requires the constant increase of a measurable quantity, in the one case the entropy of a physical system and in the other the fitness, measured by m, of a biological population. As in the physical world we can conceive the theoretical systems in which dissipative forces are wholly absent, and in which the entropy consequently remains constant, so we can conceive, though we need not expect to find, biological populations in which the genetic variance is absolutely zero, and in which fitness does not increase. Professor Eddington has recently remarked that 'The law that entropy always increases - the second law of thermodynamics - holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of nature'. It is not a little instructive that so similar a law should hold the supreme position among the biological sciences. While it is possible that both may ultimately be absorbed by some more general principle, for the present we should note that the laws as they stand present profound differences - -(1) The systems considered in thermodynamics are permanent; species on the contrary are liable to extinction, although biological improvement must be expected to occur up to the end of their existence. (2) Fitness, alth ~ Ronald A. Fisher

The absence of any protective measures may simply have been the result of a lapse of attention, with Churchill off in France and Fisher consumed by other matters and seemingly drifting toward madness. It would take on a more sinister cast, however, in light of a letter that Churchill had sent earlier in the year to the head of England's Board of Trade, Walter Runciman, in which Churchill wrote that it was "most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany." Though no one said it explicitly, Britain hoped the United States would at some point feel moved to join the Allies, and in so doing tip the balance irrevocably in their favor. ~ Erik Larson

She grabbed the half-filled bucket before Fisher could take a breathe, spun into a shadow and came out with an icy slash that sent Hunter's voice blooming. She flung the bucket at him and ran.
"You had mud on your chest and soap in your hair!" she shrieked laughing, dodging him. "Tag, you're it… and oh, yeah, by the way - pay back is a bitch! ~ L.A. Banks

Our expanding ethnic diversity of this century, a time when we will all be minorities, offers us an invitation to create a larger memory of who we are as Americans and to re-affirm our founding principle of equality. Let's put aside fears of the disuniting of America and warnings of the clash of civilizations. As Langston Hughes sang, Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe. ~ Ronald Takaki

The pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time cannot be properly understood, or healed, if viewed as a private problem suffered by damaged individuals. ~ Mark Fisher

We do not want to destroy unnecessarily what men spent so much time and care and skill in making... for these examples of craftsmanship tell us so much about our ancestors... If these things are lost or broken or destroyed, we lose a valuable part of our knowledge about our forefathers. No age lives entirely alone; every civilization is formed not merely by its own achievements but by what it has inherited from the past. If these things are destroyed, we have lost a part of our past, and we shall be the poorer for it. ~ Ronald Balfour British Monuments Man

I don't want to be thought of as a survivor because you have to continue getting involved in difficult situations to show off that particular gift, and I'm not interested in doing that anymore. ~ Carrie Fisher

If you have a sloppy religion you get a sloppy atheism. ~ Ronald Knox

It would be very discouraging if somewhere down the line you could ask a computer if the Riemann hypothesis is correct and it said, 'Yes, it is true, but you won't be able to understand the proof.' ~ Ronald Graham

The Romantic journey was usually a solitary one. Although the Romantic poets were closely connected with one another, and some collaborated in their work, they each had a strong individual vision. Romantic poets could not continue their quests for long or sustain their vision into later life. The power of the imagination and of inspiration did not last. Whereas earlier poets had patrons who financed their writing, the tradition of patronage was not extensive in the Romantic period and poets often lacked financial and other support. Keats, Shelley and Byron all died in solitary exile from England at a young age, their work left incomplete, non-conformists to the end. This coincides with the characteristic Romantic images of the solitary heroic individual, the spiritual outcast 'alone, alone, all, all alone' like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and John Clare's 'I'; like Shelley's Alastor, Keats's Endymion, or Byron's Manfred, who reached beyond the normal social codes and normal human limits so that 'his aspirations/Have been beyond the dwellers of the earth'. Wordsworth, who lived to be an old man, wrote poems throughout his life in which his poetic vision is stimulated by a single figure or object set against a natural background. Even his projected final masterpiece was entitled The Recluse. The solitary journey of the Romantic poet was taken up by many Victorian and twentieth-century poets, becoming almost an emblem of the individual's search for identity in an ever more confu ~ Ronald Carter

He makes you feel like you're the only person worth having a conversation with, and then he goes a year without having a conversation with you. The disappointment is vast. He will never build that model car with you, he will cancel dinner plans and birthday plans and vacation plans. He will choose work and someone else over you. He will break your charmed hopeful heart time and time again. ~ Tarryn Fisher

You're a dead language, you know that? No one is like you, and you are like no one. ~ Tarryn Fisher

In 1746 a French scientist, Jean-Antoine Nollet, was interested in how fast electricity could be transmitted. Nollet, a monk, persuaded nearly two hundred other monks to form a circle nearly a kilometer in circumference. The monks were connected by pieces of iron. This metal-and-human chain was connected to a primitive battery (consisting of Leyden jars). When the battery was discharged, every monk was shocked at almost the same time. Clearly electricity traveled very fast. This experiment helped pave the way for others to explore ways electric currents might be useful for communication. ~ Ronald T. Merrill

As much as we admire all the characteristics of a Ronald Reagan, as soon as something goes wrong, people will hate those same characteristics. ~ Robert Orben

There's a difference between criminals and crooks. Crooks steal. Criminals blow some guy's brains out. I'm a crook. ~ Ronald Biggs

A rush age cannot be a reflective age. ~ Ronald Knox

You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans. ~ Ronald Reagan

My basic rule is that I want people who don't want a job in government. ~ Ronald Reagan

We are all so broken. Pick up a person, shake them around and you'll hear the rattling of their broken pieces. Pieces our fathers broke, or our mothers, or our friends, strangers, or our loves. ~ Tarryn Fisher

Imagine having a mood system that functions essentially like weather - independently of whatever's going on in your life. ~ Carrie Fisher

We didn't exist. Ronald Reagan didn't say the word 'AIDS' until 1987. I've tried desperately to get a meeting in the White House; Gay Men's Health Crisis is already an established organization. I have a certain presence. ~ Larry Kramer

Regrets are particularly poignant for the old, those of us who have used up most of the chances we'll ever get and are left to make peace with our failed choices. Most things distance themselves with space and time to eventually slide off the edge of our consciousness, but not regrets. You can shove them aside, disavow them for a lifetime, but they always return. And the longer you deny them, the more they punish you when they can no longer be held at bay. ~ Lionel Fisher

After a man falls madly in love, he no longer cares how old she is. ~ Helen Fisher

It is a terrible commentary on Christian civilization that the longest period of slave-raiding known to history was initiated by the action of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and Britain, after the Christian faith had for more than a thousand years been the established religion of Europe. ~ H.A.L. Fisher

We cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide ... t here is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning. ~ Ronald Reagan

I've always believed that a lot of the trouble in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other. ~ Ronald Reagan

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man. ~ Ronald Reagan

I ran up the stairs, shedding pieces of my suit as I went, determined for a shower, resolute in washing away what I'd just done, who I really was but I was certain there was nothing that could cleanse me, to launder my poisoned blood. This was who I was. Hopeless personified. ~ Fisher Amelie

I want a cigarette. I want a cigarette. I want to kill the woman my husband loves. This is all her fault. I got pregnant to secure the man that I had already married. A woman shouldn't have to do that. She should feel safe in her marriage. That's why you got married - to feel safe from all the men who were trying to siphon your soul. I'd yielded my soul to Caleb willingly. Offered it up like a sacrificial lamb. Now, I was not only going to have to compete with the memory of another woman, but a shriveled up baby. He was already staring into her eyes like he could see the Grand Canyon tucked away in her irises. I ~ Tarryn Fisher

A stab had clearly once been made at de-uglifying these public spaces by painting a corridor a jaunty yellow. This was because, it turned out, babies come here to have their brains tested and someone thought the yellow might calm them. But I couldn't see how. Such was the oppressive ugliness of this building it would have been like sticking a red nose on a cadaver and calling it Ronald McDonald. ~ Jon Ronson

There are a thousand small honest breweries in this country that because they have been too poor and localized to compete with the big boys have been forced to close, or else operate under famous names while they turn out yeast, or hops, or some other important but unnamed ingredient of the main company's beer. Now, with the trains full of soldiers and supplies rather than pale ale, perhaps people far from the great breweries will turn again to their local beer factories and discover, as their fathers did thirty years ago, that a beer carried quietly three miles is better than one shot across three thousand on a fast freight. ~ Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home. ~ Ronald Reagan

Data can't speak for itself; it's up to you to give it a voice. Try to speak truthfully. ~ Ronald Coase

Movies were meant to stay on the screen, flat and large and colorful, gathering you up into their sweep of story, carrying you rollicking along to the end, then releasing you back into your unchanged life. But this movie misbehaved. It leaked out of the theater, poured off the screen, affected a lot of people so deeply that they required endless talismans and artifacts to stay connected to it. ~ Carrie Fisher

Knowing how the environment is pulling your strings and playing you is critical to making responsive rather than reactive moves. ~ Ronald A. Heifetz

I'd say she is nothing short of a miracle, son."
"I already knew that," I said, a small smile touching my lips. ~ Fisher Amelie

When I finally got my break in TV, as a staff writer, I always wanted to be at the top of that pyramid. I always wanted to make the decisions. I always wanted to be the one that was saying, "This is what the show is, and this is what the show is not. This is where we're going. It's going to be this kind of series." It was just something I always had my eye on, when I started in the business. ~ Ronald D. Moore

When I say that the acting is sort of like a normal acting experience, I'm just talking about the interacting in actual scenes, like doing dialogue. ~ Noel Fisher

We are not promised skies always blue, but a Helper to see us through. ~ Suzanne Woods Fisher

Not so wide that a woman would feel as if she might fall in, and not so small it looked as if he'd just sucked a lemon like Ronald Trump's, or whatever his name was. All in all, Richard's lips looked just right. ~ Linda Howard

It's a painful thing to look inside yourself and see the whys and the hows of your clockwork. ~ Tarryn Fisher