Potential Quotes - page 19
Giant predator lizards can't evolve in the presence of big mammal predators. So the lesson is that mammals suppress much of the evolutionary potential of modern lizards. Is the Komodo dragon a good working model of how dinosaurs succeeded? Absolutely not. Dinosaurs suppressed the evolutionary potential of mammals, not the other way around. And dinosaurs carried out this supression everywhere, on all the continents, not merely on a few tiny tropical isles. Dinosaurs succeeded where Komodo dragons fail.
Robert T. Bakker
The sum of evolutionary evidence is thoroughly damning. In nearly every modification of the evolutionary process made in the duckbills as they developed from their dryosaur ancestors, the duckbills suffered a diminution of their swimming potential. Their fore- and hind paws became shorter and more compact, not longer and more widely spread. Their tails got weaker and stiffer. Far from being the best, the duckbills must have been the clumsiest and slowest swimmers in all the Dinosauria. If pressed, they probably could paddle slowly from one riverbanck to another. The central theme of their bodily evolution was indeed specialized - orthodox theory was right on that point - but the direction of specialization was landward. These dinosaurs were specialized for a totally terrestrial existence.
Robert T. Bakker
Let me be absolutely clear: in terms of potential deaths and the impact on our economy, the crisis we face from coronavirus is on the scale of a major war, and we must act accordingly. Nobody knows how many fatalities we may see, but they could equal or surpass the U.S. casualties we saw in World War II. It is an absolute moral imperative that our response -- as a government, as a society, as business communities, and as individuals -- meets the enormity of this crisis... If our neighbor or co-worker gets sick, we have the potential to get sick. If our neighbors lose their jobs, then our local economies suffer, and we may lose our jobs. If doctors and nurses do not have the equipment and staffing capacity they need now, people we know and love may die. The American people deserve transparency... We need daily information -- clear, science-based information -- from credible scientific voices, not politicians.
Bernie Sanders
Some years ago I found myself in discussion with a friend who entertained the notion that the general tendency of things in this world is towards equilibrium, the result of which would be peace and blessedness to the human race. My notion, was that equilibrium meant... death. No motive power is to be got from heat, save during its fall from a higher to a lower temperature, as no power is to be got from water save during its descent from a higher to a lower level. Thus also life consists, not in equilibrium, but in the passage towards equilibrium. In man it is the leap from the potential through the actual to repose.
John Tyndall
Our country is not flourishing. The enormous creative and spiritual potential of our nations is not being used sensibly. Entire branches of industry are producing goods that are of no interest to anyone, while we are lacking the things we need. A state which calls itself a workers' state humiliates and exploits workers. Our obsolete economy is wasting the little energy we have available.
Václav Havel
In my country at present, women have no participation in the higher levels of government and none whatsoever in the judiciary. Even within the democratic movement only 14 out of the 485 MPs elected in 1990 were women -- all from my own party, the National League for Democracy. These 14 women represent less than 3 percent of the total number of successful candidates. They, like their male colleagues, have not been permitted to take office since the outcome of those elections has been totally ignored. Yet the very high performance of women in our educational system and in the management of commercial enterprises proves their enormous potential to contribute to the betterment of society in general. Meanwhile our women have yet to achieve those fundamental rights of free expression, association and security of life denied also to their menfolk.
Aung San Suu Kyi
