Selective Breeding Quotes

However, when we step into farm fields, the vegetation becomes very quiet. Thanks to selective breeding, our cultivated plants have, for the most part, lost the ability to communicate above or below ground-you could say they are deaf and dumb-and therefore they are easy prey for insect pests. That is one reason why modern agriculture uses so many pesticides. Perhaps farmers can learn from the forests and breed a little more wildness back into their grain and potatoes so that they'll be more talkative in the future. ~ Peter Wohlleben

It only takes twenty generations of selective breeding to create large differences or appearance and behavior in other mammals. ~ Jonathan Haidt

In the symbiotic community of the forest, not only trees but also shrubs and grasses - and possibly all plant species - exchange information this way. However, when we step into farm fields, the vegetation becomes very quiet. Thanks to selective breeding, our cultivated plants have, for the most part, lost their ability to communicate above or below ground - you could say they are deaf and dumb - and therefore they are easy prey for insect pests.12 That is one reason why modern agriculture uses so many pesticides. Perhaps farmers can learn from the forests and breed a little more wildness back into their grain and potatoes so that they'll be more talkative in the future. Communication ~ Peter Wohlleben

After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of today are still in the rudimentary stage. The science of our time has attacked but a little department of the field of human disease, but even so, it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently. Our agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a balance as they can. We improve our favourite plants and animals--and how few they are--gradually by selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle. We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better organized, and still better. That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies. ~ H.G. Wells

Traveling on, the shaft of his light reached now a great, dully shining oblong, and he stopped, surprised. Then, through the glass sides, he saw bright shapes of fish wheel in schools down the opaque water, startled by the illumination. Coming at last, and so suddenly, on life like his own, Mr. Lecky moved closer. The fixed flood of his light enveloped these small fish dimly, glowed back on him. They came sliding, drifting, mouths in motion, gills rippling, up the light, against the glass. Their senseless round eyes stared at Mr. Lecky. Idling with great grace, the extravagant products of selective breeding - fringetails, Korean, calico - passed, swayed about, came languidly back. Moving faster, stub-finned, crop-tailed danios from the Malabar coast appeared, hovered, taking the light on their fat flanks, now spotted, now iridescent pearl or opal.

Seeing so many of them, so eager and attentive, Mr. Lecky felt an unexpected compunction. He was their only proprietor; and soon, trapped unnaturally here in the big tank, they would starve to death. His light went back to a counter he had just passed, showing him again the half-noticed packages - food for birds and pet animals, food, too, for fish. Returning to the tank, his light found many of the fish still waiting, the rest rushing back. He went and took a package, tore the top off, and poured the contents onto the rectangle of open water. It would perhaps postpone the time when, having eaten each other, the sick rema ~ James Gould Cozzens

Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers
and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt
of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of
sheep against the practice of eating mutton. ~ Bertrand Russell

We have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding One generation and out. We have no problems with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding. ~ Wayne Pacelle

One of the problems, and it's one which is obviously going to get worse, is that all the people at the party are either the children or the grandchildren or the great-grandchildren of the people who wouldn't leave in the first place, and because of all the business about selective breeding and regressive genes and so on, it means that all the people now at the party are either absolutely fanatical partygoers, or gibbering idiots, or, more and more frequently, both. ~ Douglas Adams

Eugenics, which had started long before my time, had once been defined as including free love and prevention of conception ... Recently it had cropped up again in the form of selective breeding. ~ Margaret Sanger

The only fundamental and possible Socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of Man: in other terms, of human evolution We must eliminate the Yahoo, or his vote will wreck the commonwealth. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future, the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit. ~ Tom Robbins

They want to control humankind through what they call selective breeding. The Nazis started it, but now the nwo are continuing it. See, the only way to control population is to first get it back down to manageable size. They're culling the herd, same way the game commission does when deer population gets out of control. That's why we've got diseases like cancer and aids. You telling me that we can put a little goddamn skateboard-looking robot on Mars and have it send pictures back, but we can't find a cure for cancer? There's a cure. You can bet on that, boys. There's a goddamn cure. They just won't release it because cancer helps cut down the population. ~ Brian Keene

Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent species may make in a single generation, other species make over many generations of selective breeding and selective dying. Yet intelligence is demanding. It is misdirected by accident or by intent, it can foster its own orgies of breeding and dying. ~ Octavia E. Butler

Good-breeding shows itself most where to an ordinary eye it appears the least. ~ Joseph Addison

The U.S. legal system is organized as an adversarial contest: in civil cases, between two citizens; in criminal cases, between a citizen and the state. Physical violence and intimidation are not allowed in court, whereas aggressive argument, selective presentation of the facts, and psychological attack are permitted, with the presumption that this ritualized, hostile encounter offers the best method of arriving at the truth. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

Far from the cinematic drama of hospital emergency rooms, Slow Medicine embraces the unsung work of daily attention that is the greatest need and firmest foundation for longevity and quality of life at the farthest reach of age. Excellent chronic care attends to the day-to-day needs and conditions of the patient - by offering emotional support and social stimulation, supplying better nutrition, easing chronic skin and nail conditions, and making sleeping, moving, bathing, dressing, and voiding easier. Slow Medicine is the careful practice that most reliably sustains fragile patterns of well-being. This foundation for better elder care strengthens, rather than replaces, the selective use of high-tech care. During the time of the writing of this book, I have lived the ~ Dennis Mccullough

In a piece called "No More Yes. It's Either HELL YEAH! Or No," the popular TED speaker Derek Sivers describes a simple technique for becoming more selective in the choices we make. The key is to put the decision to an extreme test: if we feel total and utter conviction to do something, then we say yes, Derek-style. Anything less gets a thumbs down. ~ Greg McKeown

Poshlust," or in a better transliteration poshlost, has many nuances, and evidently I have not described them clearly enough in my little book on Gogol, if you think one can ask anybody if he is tempted by poshlost. Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo-literature - these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know. Poshlost speaks in such concepts as "America is no better than Russia" or "We all share in Germany's guilt." The flowers of poshlost bloom in such phrases and terms as "the moment of truth," "charisma," "existential" (used seriously), "dialogue" (as applied to political talks between nations), and "vocabulary" (as applied to a dauber). Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost. Belonging to a very select club (which sports one Jewish name - that of the treasurer) is genteel poshlost. Hack reviews are frequently poshlost, but it also lurks in certain highbrow essays. Poshlost calls Mr. Blank a great poet and Mr. Bluff a great novelist. One of poshlost's favorite breeding places has always been the Art Exhibition; there it is produced by so-called sculptors working with the tools of wrec ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The single simplest reason why human space flight is necessary is this, stated as plainly as possible: keeping all your breeding pairs in one place is a retarded way to run a species. ~ Warren Ellis

Well, in our industry it's that the movies cost so much money to make they have to appeal to a broad audience. And I think that's part of what will loosen up in the future, as technology makes it cheaper, you'll be able to make films for a more selective audience. I think people will be able to make more personal movies. ~ Chris Wedge

Exchange of breeding individuals between two populations tends to homogenize their gene pools. ~ Peter R. Grant

Trout aren't naturally as selective as they've become in crowded tailwaters - they've been trained to be like that by too much fishing pressure. I've seen tailwater fish that are so hysterical they'll refuse naturals. You wonder how they get enough to eat. ~ John Gierach

Those are serious questions of war and peace, of freedom or tyranny, whether or not there is ever going to be a hope of us instilling some democratic systems in a part of the world that frankly is breeding hate and destruction directed right at us. ~ Zach Wamp

The Gospels were written to present the life and teachings of Jesus in ways that would be appropriate to different readerships, and for that reason are not all the same. They were not intended to be biographies of Jesus, but selective accounts that would demonstrate his significance for different cultures. ~ John Drane

England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. ~ Wole Soyinka

You can take a school like the University of Colorado, with a selective admission standard. It has a better caliber student going in, so you ought to have a better caliber coming out. ~ Roy Romer

One of the important things about religion is that it is a sphere which is partially protected from selection. Religious creativity occurs when people pull out of the whole selectivity issue. Becoming celibate - obviously you couldn't be less selective that that. Yes, selection is always in the background. But it's not always there in the foreground. If you don't understand that, you're missing a lot. ~ Robert Neelly Bellah

The situation - having to choose between imposing higher retail prices and reducing investments and military spending - created a dilemma for the government: deciding between conflict with the public or with the Party economic elite. But not making a decision heightened the risk that, as the crisis developed, there would be conflict with both the public and the elite.18 The new generation of leaders clearly did not understand this. The traditional management of the economy was oriented on natural, rather than abstract, parameters. The development of cattle breeding was discussed at the highest level more frequently than the country's budget. Industry and business leaders regarded finances as necessary but dreary bookkeeping.19 In addition, information on the real state of the budget, hard currency reserves, foreign debt, and balance of payments was available only to an extremely narrow circle of people, many of whom understood nothing about it anyway. ~ Yegor Gaidar

Where would anyone in publicity be if they allowed sensitivity, restraint, breeding or good taste to stand in their way? ~ Isabelle Holland

I've met at least three Great Beast 666's over the last few years, and not one of them had even one-tenth of the wit, humour, wisdom or panache that I would expect from a figure of Crowleyan proportions. Isn't it curious how those who strive to be someone else are very selective; yes, I can see that you've got the heroin habit and mastered the art of beating up on your 'scarlet women,' but you haven't been extradited [sic] from any countries, you haven't published anything, nor have you climbed any mountains of late. ~ Phil Hine

The result of these many voices and general lack of agreement on what really are the biblical means to Christian maturity seems to be breeding two kinds of believers. There are some who are not quite sure that they are even on the right track of normal Christian living; there are others who are quite certain that they have arrived at the station. Or, to change the metaphor, there seem to be so many master chefs around that some are so confused by looking only at the various menus that they are starving to death, while others are sampling everything that is offered with resultant indigestion, and a few have sworn allegiance to one and are convinced that all the others are frauds. ~ Charles C. Ryrie

It is necessary for the oppressors to approach the people in order, via subjugation, to keep them passive. This approximation, however, does not involve being with the people, or require true communication. It is accomplished by the oppressors' depositing myths indispensable to the preservation of the status quo: for example, the myth that the oppressive order is a "free society"; the myth that all persons are free to work where they wish, that if they don't like their boss they can leave him and look for another job; the myth that this order respects human rights and is therefore worthy of esteem; the myth that anyone who is industrious can become an entrepreneur--worse yet, the myth that the street vendor is as much an entrepreneur as the owner of a large factory; the myth of the universal right of education, when of all the Brazilian children who enter primary schools only a tiny fraction ever reach the university; the myth of the equality of all individuals, when the question: "Do you know who you're talking to?" is still current among us; the myth of the heroism of the oppressor classes as defenders of "Western Christian civilization" against "materialist barbarism"; the myth of the charity and generosity of the elites, when what they really do as a class is to foster selective "good deeds" (subsequently elaborated into the myth of "disinterested aid," which on the international level was severely criticized by Pope John XXIII); the myth that the dominant elites, "recogn ~ Paulo Freire

For such people, the ruling gods are progress, science, and development. They imagine that we know so much more about the world than those people of olden times, because "we" have science. Of course, they themselves do not have science, they have simply heard and believed that scientific knowledge is real knowledge. They know little about the goals and methods of science, and nothing about the Islamic Intellectual tradition. They are blind imitators in intellectual issues, that is, on the level where they should be striving for their own understanding. What is worse, this is a selective imitation, since they only accept the authority of the "scientists" and the "experts", not that of the great Muslim thinkers of the past. If Einstein said it, it must be true, but if Al-Ghazali or Mulla Sadra said it, then it can't be true, because it isn't scientific. ~ William C. Chittick

The Golden Bough captured the imagination of many artists in the early twentieth century. Eliot, certainly, was immersed in it, discussing it familiarly in his graduate school papers and book reviews and constantly alluding to it in his art. The most straightforward advice he offers to readers of The Waste Land (given in the notes to the poem) is, in paraphrase, that any serious reader of the poem must take into consideration modern scholarship in myth and anthropology, especially Frazer Golden Bough and Jessie Weston From Ritual to Romance. The poet says that he is indebted to this scholarship for his title, his plan, his symbolism, and many of his references to ancient religion and society. His claim about the title, taken from the monomyth of Frazer and Weston, his claim about the symbolism, associated with the birth-death-rebirth cycles of the myths, and his claim about the miscellaneous undergirding references have been discussed by Grover Smith and other scholars. We wish to focus more on Eliot's claim about being indebted to Frazer for the plan of the poem. We believe it refers, at least in part, to Frazer's use of the comparative method and to his practice of assembling many perspectives and allowing these perspectives to make his point.

It must be noted at once that Eliot was quite selective in his admiration of Frazer. For example, he did not admire Frazer's positivism. Frazer put his faith in science and celebrated what he called the evolution from magic ~ Jewel Spears Brooker

Subtle cues in your behavior will set the frame that you are a selective, high-value guy. She will pick up on this and gain interest. She expects that a guy with potential will be selective. Here are some standards worth considering:
An attractive woman who takes care of herself
A woman who is sociable and has friends
A woman who has a real thirst for life
A woman who has a great energy and a positive outlook
A woman who is not a flake ~ Erik Von Markovik

Pornography, in my opinion, has been much misunderstood, for it doesn't develop sex fiends and send them roaming alleyways - it is an anodyne for the sexually oppressed and unrequited, for what is the aim of pornography if not to stimulate masturbation? And surely masturbation is the pleasanter alternative for men "on the muscle," as they say in horse-breeding circles. ~ Truman Capote

Birds arrived. Gulls landed within weeks of the island's emergence, depositing the guano that built a richer soil. Fulmars and guillemots were the first to nest. Snow buntings and graylag geese came, almost ninety bird species in all, and twenty-one species of butterfly and moth. The first bush - a willow - came fifteen years after creation, and five years after the willows, seals were breeding on the young island. The descriptions make Surtsey sound like an orchestra, one instrument after another joining until there was the symphony that is an ecosystem. ~ Rebecca Solnit

The fundamental metaphor of National Socialism as it related to the world around it was the garden, not the wild forest. One of the most important Nazi ideologists, R.W. Darré, made clear the relationship between gardening and genocide: "He who leaves the plants in a garden to themselves will soon find to his surprise that the garden is overgrown by weeds and that even the basic character of the plants has changed. If therefore the garden is to remain the breeding ground for the plants, if, in other words, it is to lift itself above the harsh rule of natural forces, then the forming will of a gardener is necessary, a gardener who, by providing suitable conditions for growing, or by keeping harmful influences away, or by both together, carefully tends what needs tending and ruthlessly eliminates the weeds which would deprive the better plants of nutrition, air, light, and sun. . . . Thus we are facing the realization that questions of breeding are not trivial for political thought, but that they have to be at the center of all considerations, and that their answers must follow from the spiritual, from the ideological attitude of a people. We must even assert that a people can only reach spiritual and moral equilibrium if a well-conceived breeding plan stands at the very center of its culture. ~ Derrick Jensen

Courtesy is breeding. Breeding is an excellent thing. Always remember that. ~ Lillian Hellman

The world is too much for us. Rationality as we have come to know it works by ignoring most of experience: laws are arrived at by selective abstraction. ~ Tom Cheetham

NO DIVINE BOVINE ! The clumsy creature currently inhabiting the White House is a distinctly dangerous animal. Part boneheaded raging bully, part dastardly coward showing signs of advanced stage mad cow disease. Neither of good pedigree nor useful breeding stock, there is essentially very little of substance between the T (bone) and the RUMP, except of course for an abundance of methane and bullshit. It's high time brave matadors for you to enter the bullring, with nimble step and fleet of foot. Take good aim and bring down this marauding beast once and for all. Slay public enemy number one and we will salute you forever. A louder cheer you will not hear from Madrid to Mexico City, from Beijing to Brussels, from London to Lahore, from Toronto to Tehran and ten thousand cities in between. ~ Alex Morritt

People even talk of being "on the wrong side of history," as though they knew not only what the last twenty years had produced, but what the next twenty years were going to produce as well. The idolization of "progress," of "moving with the times," is part of the same movement. "Now that we live in the twenty-first century . . ." people begin, as though it were obvious that one's ethics or theology ought to change with the calendar. All this is a form of creeping pantheism, of looking at certain trends in the wider world and deducing that they are what "God" is doing. (It's also very selective; it cheerfully screens out all the inventions of modernism, such as guillotines and gas chambers, which do not exactly fit the picture of an upward journey into light.) ~ N. T. Wright

In reality, there are no biblical literalists, only selective literalists. By abolishing slavery and ordaining women, millions of Protestants have gone far beyond biblical literalism. It's time we did the same for homophobia. ~ William Sloane Coffin

Politeness must be cultivated, for the promptings of nature are eminently selfish, and courtesy and good-breeding are only attainable by effort and discipline. But even courtesy has limits where dignity should govern it, for when carried to excess, particularly in manner, it borders on sycophancy, which is almost as despicable as rudeness. ~ Arthur Martine

Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural. ~ Aristotle.

My brain I'll prove the female to my soul; my soul the father: and these two beget a generation of still-breeding thoughts, and these same thoughts people this little world. ~ William Shakespeare

People of small calibre are always carping. How affected so-and-so is! Don't you think he is silly? He was certainly quite mistaken about this or that. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or their prowess or good breeding. ~ Van Wyck Brooks

I suppose being the kind of creatures we [people] are, we like to censor the past, and are selective, or want to be selective about the things that we remember. If you want to destroy people, destroy their memory, destroy their history. ~ Desmond Tutu

Improving upon nature is the very essence of plant breeding, and so it goes to the heart of one of the central debates of the human condition: the relationship between humanity and nature and the degree to which the human race has a right (or indeed a responsibility) to change plant life for its own ends. ~ Noel Kingsbury

Ebola, that little bastard of a bug, had popped up earlier in the summer in Sierra Leone in the worst outbreak in history. Was it possible that global warming had changed something important about the ecological balance in Africa and turned it into an optimal, continent-sized petri dish for breeding that virus? ~ Bobby Adair

We spent the rest of the afternoon searching for the lost Girl Scout troop. We found them asleep, drugged with music. They were curled around a sign that said, "No All-Female Groups Beyond This Point. Satyr Breeding Area." Satyrs have a peculiar sense of humor. I ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

The impulse to be looking constantly with central vision is part of a psychophysical syndrome which includes spinal fixation as another characteristic. Tunnel vision -- the use of the macula, or central portion of the retina, to the relative exclusion of the surrounding area -- is hard on/eyes and diminishes their visual potential; it accentuates selective fixation upon objects one after another, missing the whole view and seeing objects as separate from their larger context. It accompanies and fortifies a tunneling habit of mind, a tendency to, fasten onto particular issues or circumstances, to hold doggedly and sometimes with exaggerated emotionality to a point of view, and to be unable to contextualize or to find fresh responses. ~ Alexandra Pierce