Gad Saad on empathy vs. survival

A society dies when it cares more about exhibiting infinite tolerance and empathy than invoking its survival instinct.

~ Gad Saad

Charles Darwin on survival and adaptability

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

~ Charles Darwin

Surfer Garret McNamara on riding the worlds largest wave

I just didn't realize how big it was. So I started and I kept going down and down, and the drop seemed like forever, and I thought, wow. I started making the bottom turn, and felt the lip hit me. You can see it in the video. You see me look around twice, and then I get hit by the white water on the shoulder, and it feels like a ton of bricks, and I am thinking, I've gotta make this. I've seen waves rip guy's arms off, and I am thinking this thing could tear my head off.

Garrett McNamara, World Surfing Champion, November 8, 2011

Charles Darwin on "survival of the fittest"

Can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others would have the best chance of surviving and procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest.

~ Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)