Every person is the master of his or her own destiny. What we think about alters our character. Our character organizes our personality, and our personality scripts how successfully we interact with other people and respond to a changing environment.

— Kilroy J. Oldster

I have every expectation that cancer will become known as the disease of human evolution trying and failing to adapt to a significantly changed environment.

— Steven Magee

Pull approaches differ significantly from push approaches in terms of how they organize and manage resources. Push approaches are typified by "programs" - tightly scripted specifications of activities designed to be invoked by known parties in pre-determined contexts. Of course, we don't mean that all push approaches are software programs - we are using this as a broader metaphor to describe one way of organizing activities and resources. Think of thick process manuals in most enterprises or standardized curricula in most primary and secondary educational institutions, not to mention the programming of network television, and you will see that institutions heavily rely on programs of many types to deliver resources in pre-determined contexts. Pull approaches, in contrast, tend to be implemented on "platforms" designed to flexibly accommodate diverse providers and consumers of resources. These platforms are much more open-ended and designed to evolve based on the learning and changing needs of the participants. Once again, we do not mean to use platforms in the literal sense of a tangible foundation, but in a broader, metaphorical sense to describe frameworks for orchestrating a set of resources that can be configured quickly and easily to serve a broad range of needs. Think of Expedia's travel service or the emergency ward of a hospital, and you will see the contrast with the hard-wired push programs.

— John Hagel III

[The] tremendous and still accelerating development of science and technology has not been accompanied by an equal development in social, economic, and political patterns... We are now...only beginning to explore the potentialities which it offers for developments in our culture outside technology, particularly in the social, political and economic fields. It is safe to predict that...such social inventions as modern-type Capitalism, Fascism, and Communism will be regarded as primitive experiments directed toward the adjustment of modern society to modern methods

— Ralph Linton

They are as smart as they are ruthless. That's why they've been around for all five years.

— Joe Reyes

To appreciate beauty is to experience humility-- to recognize that something larger and more powerful than oneself is at work in the environment. And humility, it turns out, is key to recognizing that in order to survive, you must adapt yourself to the environment, that it won't adapt to your needs.

— Daniel James Brown

When the ancient Romans would conquer a new place or a new people, they would leave the language and the customs intact – they would even let the conquered people rule themselves in most cases, appointing a governor to maintain a foothold in the region.” Wilson leaned against the whiteboard as he spoke, his posture relaxed, his hands clasped loosely.“This was part of what made Rome so successful. They didn't try to make everyone Romans in the process of conquering them. When I went to Africa with the Peace Corp, a woman who worked with the Corp said something to me that I have often thought about since. She told me 'Africa is not going to adapt to you. You are going to have to adapt to Africa.' That is true of wherever you go, whether it's school or whether it's in the broader world.

— Amy Harmon

With the strength of will, you can adapt to any situation.

— Lailah Gifty Akita

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

— R. Buckminster Fuller