Variational Individuality Quotes

Modeling the evolution of modularity became significantly easier after a kind of genetic variation was discovered by quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping in the lab of James Cheverud at Washington University called 'relationship QTL' or r-QTL for short. An r-QTL is a genetic locus that affects the correlations between two quantitative traits (i.e. their variational relationship, and therefore, 'relationship' loci). Surprisingly, a large fraction of these so-mapped loci are also neutral with respect to the character mean. This means one can select on these 'neutral' r-QTLs without simultaneously changing the character mean in a certain way.
It was easy to show that differential directional selection on a character could easily lead a decrease in genetic correlation between characters. Of course, it is not guaranteed that each and every population has the right kind of r-QTL polymorphisms, nor is it yet clear what kind of genetic architecture allows for the existence of an r-QTL.
Nevertheless, these findings make it plausible that differential directional selection can enhance the genetic/variational individuality of traits and, thus, may play a role in the origin of evolutionary novelties by selecting for variational individuality.
It must be added, though, that there has been relatively little research in this area and that we will need to see more to determine whether we understand what is going on here, if anything. In particular, one difficulty is the math ~ Günter Wagner

Stand up for your beliefs, and be different. ~ Fennel Hudson

I'm coming 'round to the view that there's only a personal view of the world. ~ David Hockney

There was just this amazing individuality. It's just a whole different world of optimism and fearlessness, women taking off their bras and dancing around naked, and a political hopefulness and involvement. ~ Jill Clayburgh

It is argued that because they believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put there faith there and let the smaller insecurities take care of themselves. But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potential moral units- because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves anymore, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coat-tails. ~ John Steinbeck

Individuality should not translate to narcissism. Realizing the strength of individuality is an accomplishment while being narcissistic is a failure. ~ Amitav Chowdhury

Most people actively try to bury their differences and become like everyone else for fear of ridicule. They want to belong. They want to 'fit in'. They don't like to be singled out, have their differences scrutinised, put on microscope slides or in Petri dishes and poked by society. I on the other hand, rejoice in it. I don't want to belong if it means having to wrestle your individuality into a small space, paint it grey and make it... normal. ~ Amanda James

Dear Fellow Human Being,

You are born wild, You do not deserve to be tamed!

Tell yourself,

You do not deserve this!

All those toxic words you have to listen from people,

All those fears they try to pin on your mind,

All those giggles they aim at your dreams,

All those judgmental stares inspecting your individuality,

All those fingers pointing towards your crude character,

All those shackles that tie your feet to social expectations,

All those cages that do not let your imagination fly free,

Listen deeply, you do not deserve any of it.

My dear fellow human, you do not deserve this hostility.

You are born wild, You do not deserve to be tamed!

― Jasz Gill ~ Jasz Gill

Our character is mainly shaped by our primary social community - the people with whom we eat, play, converse, and study. ~ Timothy Keller

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature! ~ George Bernard Shaw

This One True Love - which flourished for two, three years - left me wounded. I spent months scooped in bed, howling my heart out. In learning to forget him, I had to pick up what was left of me, the little fragments of individuality [...] like broken bangles, chipped glass, colourful pebbles. [...] This was a lover who had become the landscape. Everything in Kerala reminded me of him. ~ Meena Kandasamy

I have beauty, intelligence, individuality, sensuality and sexuality. ~ Shannon Tweed

The transcendent importance of love and goodwill in all human relations is shown by their mighty beneficent effect upon the individual and society. ~ George David Birkhoff

Our culture promotes individuality, while the Amish are deeply entrenched in community. To us, if someone stands out, it's no big deal because diversity is respected and expected. To the Amish, there's no room for deviation from the norm. It's important to fit in, because that similarity of identity is what defines the society. If you don't fit in, the consequences are psychological tragic, you stand alone when all you've ever known is being part of the group. ~ Jodi Picoult

The individual must not merely wait and criticize, he must defend the cause the best he can. The fate of the world will be such as the world deserves. ~ Albert Einstein

Man, furthermore, must make his choices as an individual, for individuality is one side of one's consciousness of one's self. We can see this point clearly when we realize that consciousness of one's self is always a unique act - I can never know exactly how you see yourself and you never can know exactly how I relate to myself. This is the inner sanctum where each man must stand alone. This fact makes for much of the tragedy and inescapable isolation in human life, but it also indicates again that we must find the strength in ourselves to stand in our own inner sanctum as individuals. ~ Rollo May

All outcast peoples struggle to be recognized as individuals. The damage of oppression is that it robs you of your individuality. You're just a faggot. Or whatever - fill in the blank. Everything you do is seen through the prism of your gayness or your womanness or your blackness by some people. ~ Rita Mae Brown

A man is known by the books he reads. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Respect man, love man. Respect his individuality, respect his differences. And that is possible only if you respect your individuality. That is possible only if you are grounded in your own being and you are unafraid. ~ Rajneesh

Each man has his own way of being himself and of saying it so ultimately that he can't be denied. ~ Henry Miller

[The goal is] "liberation from the bondage of rebirth. According to the Vedantists the self, which they call the atman and we call the soul, is distinct from the body and its senses, distinct from the mind and its intelligence; it is not part of the Absolute, for the Absolute, being infinite, can have no parts but the Absolute itself. It is uncreated; it has existed form eternity and when at least it has cast off the seven veils of ignorance will return to the infinitude from which it came. It is like a drop of water that has arisen from the sea, and in a shower has fallen into a puddle, then drifts into a brook, finds its way into a stream, after that into a river, passing through mountain gorges and wide plains, winding this way and that, obstructed by rocks and fallen trees, till at least it reaches the boundless seas from which it rose."
"But that poor little drop of water, when it has once more become one with the sea, has surely lost its individuality."
Larry grinned.
"You want to taste sugar, you don't want to become sugar. What is individuality but the expression of our egoism? Until the soul has shed the last trace of that it cannot become one with the Absolute."
"You talk very familiarly of the Absolute, Larry, and it's an imposing word. What does it actually signify to you?"
"Reality. You can't say what it is ; you can only say what it isn't. It's inexpressible. The Indians call it Brahman. It's not a person, it's not a thing, it's not a c ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Everyone, either from modesty or egotism, hides away the best and most delicate of his soul's possessions; to gain the esteem of others, we must only ever show our ugliest sides; this is how we keep ourselves on the common level ~ Gustave Flaubert

We are flawed creatures, all of us. Some of us think that means we should fix our flaws. But get rid of my flaws and there would be no one left. ~ Sarah Vowell

When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ, they showed me this picture of three oranges and a pear. They asked me which one is different and does not belong; they taught me different was wrong. ~ Ani DiFranco

How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and the waves sparkling and the sea-gulls circling around Fort Wagner's ancient site. But the great earthworks and their thundering cannon, the commanders and their followers, the wild assault and repulse that for a brief space made night hideous on that far-off evening, have all sunk into the blue gulf of the past, and for the majority of this generation are hardly more than an abstract name, a picture, a tale that is told. Only when some yellow-bleached photograph of a soldier of the 'sixties comes into our hands, with that odd and vivid look of individuality due to the moment when it was taken, do we realize the concreteness of that by-gone history, and feel how interminable to the actors in them were those leaden-footed hours and years. ~ William James

Like most modern Americans, I assume individuality is not only a fundamental value, but a goal in life, an art form. ~ Howard Rheingold

In this generation, along with the dominating traits, the recessive ones also reappear, their individuality fully revealed, and they do so in the decisively expressed average proportion of 3:1, so that among each four plants of this generation three receive the dominating and one the recessive characteristic. ~ Gregor Mendel

The whole of the American Dream has been based on the chance to get ahead, for one's self or one's children. Would this country have ever reached the point it has if the individual had always been refused the rewards of his labors and dangers? ~ James Adams

Ethnic stereotypes are misshapen pearls, sometimes with a sandy grain of truth at their center ... but they ignore complexity, change, and individuality. ~ Anna Quindlen

In the history of history, there has never been someone with your particular genetic make-up or life experiences. This being the case, we have no reference points with which to compare ourselves, and therefore it is futile to attempt to measure yourself relative to others. ~ Chris Matakas

No one should part with their individuality and become that of another. ~ William Ellery Channing

Consciousness makes the individual careful to maintain his own existence; and if this were not so, there would be no surety for the preservation of the species. From all this it is clear that individuality is not a form of perfection, but rather a limitation; and so to be freed from it is not loss but gain. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Well, to tell you the truth, I've thought of it often and often before, but he's such devilish good company is Huntingdon, after all - you can't imagine what a jovial good fellow he is when he's not fairly drunk, only just primed or half-seas-over - we all have a bit of a liking for him at the bottom of our hearts, though we can't respect him.'
'But should you wish yourself to be like him?'
'No, I'd rather be like myself, bad as I am. ~ Anne Bronte

I certainly and deliberately introduced a great deal of variety into the people in the clamshell, which I suppose grows out of growing up in an individualistic society we profess to have. ~ Bill Reid

A single name of a multitude of practices centered about the auto-driven auto. Flashing across the country in the sure hands of an invisible chauffeur, windows all opaque, night dark, sky high, tires assailing the road below like four phantom buzzsaws - and starting from scratch and ending in the same place, and never knowing where you are going or where you have been - it is possible, for a moment, to kindle some feeling of individuality in the coldest brainpan, to produce a momentary awareness of self by virtue of an apartness from all but a sense of motion. This is because movement through darkness is the ultimate abstraction of life itself - at least that's what one of the Vital Comedians said, and everybody in the place laughed. ~ Roger Zelazny