Bruce Cameron Quotes

Indeed, if our ancestors of millions of years ago hadn't learned how to care for one another and hunt in packs, they'd all have ended up being eaten by leopards.

Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is a natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.

Take, for example, the African jungle, the home of the cheetah. On whom does the cheetah prey? The old, the sick, the wounded, the weak, the very young, but never the strong. Lesson: If you would not be prey, you had better be strong.

With each new day in Africa, a gazelle wakes up knowing he must outrun the fastest lion or perish. At the same time, a lion stirs and stretches, knowing he must outrun the fastest gazelle or starve. It's no different for the human race. Whether you consider yourself a gazelle or a lion, you have to run faster than others to survive.

With all our mastery over the powers of Nature we have adhered to the view that the struggle for existence is a permanent and necessary condition of life.

The shark is the apex predator in the sea. Sharks have molded evolution for 450 million years. All fish species that are prey to the sharks have had their behavior, their speed, their camouflage, their defense mechanisms molded by the shark.

What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the Earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle.

I should premise that I use the term “Struggle for Existence” in a large and Metaphorical Sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) success in leaving progeny.

When the ancestors of the cheetah first began pursuing the ancestors of the gazelle, neither of them could run as fast as they can today.

Humans are just a very, very small part of the panoply of life, and it is arguable that in a certain sense, humans have emancipated themselves from Darwinian selection.

The weak die out and the strong will survive, and will live on forever

In the new world, it is not the big fish which eats the small fish, it's the fast fish which eats the slow fish.

The fittest survive. What is meant by the fittest? Not the strongest; not the cleverest - weakness and stupidity everywhere survive. There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive. 'Fitness,' then, is only another name for 'survival.' Darwinism: That survivors survive.

Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdom which cannot help itself.

Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.

Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.

If worms carried pistols, birds wouldn't eat 'em.

When I see how fast technology is advancing, my mind thinks of evolution and how organisms also have to evolve or adapt in order to, in their case, survive.

Fishes live in the sea, as men do on land: the great ones eat up the little ones.

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

Whatever the life form, evolution selects for economy of resources.

Very few species have survived unchanged. There's one called lingula, which is a little shellfish, a little brachiopod about the size of my fingernail, that has survived for 500 million years, but it's survived by being unobtrusive and doing nothing, and you can't accuse human beings of that.

Nature favors those organisms which leave the environment in better shape for their progeny to survive.