Jonas Salk Quotes

I think of evolution as an error-making and error-correcting process, and we are constantly learning from experience.

When things get bad enough, then something happens to correct the course. And it's for that reason that I speak about evolution as an error-making and an error-correcting process. And if we can be ever so much better - ever so much slightly better - at error correcting than at error making, then we'll make it.

I see the triumph of good over evil as a manifestation of the error-correcting process of evolution.

Risks, I like to say, always pay off. You learn what to do, or what not to do.

You make mistakes to learn from them.

Evolution is like walking on a rolling barrel. The walker isn't so much interested in where the barrel is going as he is in keeping on top of it.

The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer (although not with a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament)

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there's nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.

The snake that cannot shed its skin perishes.

If we want to sum up the theory of evolution by natural selection in two words, which have great relevance for all societies and businesses, we should simply remember: diversity works.

You show me a successful complex system, and I will show you a system that has evolved through trial and error.

I'm here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn't make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.

You can't be afraid to fail. It's the only way you succeed - you're not gonna succeed all the time, and I know that.

The reason for natural selection's great success is that it provides a satisfying explanation of how evolution might have occurred: individual organisms vary, and if those variations are inherited, the successful ones will survive and propagate and pass down their desirable traits to succeeding generations.

The great thing about the business is how Darwinian it is. We have to swim or die - if you are found wanting over a period of time, you've either got to change what you're doing or find something else to do.

That strong mother doesn't tell her cub, Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you. She says, Toughen up, this is reality we are living in.

Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts.

You learn by mistakes. When you make those mistakes, you try not to make them the third time or the second time. You learn from them. Sometimes you learn the hard way. In football, if I held on to the ball too long, I got my butt kicked. You better make that decision quicker.

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.

Failure is essential. Trial and error is necessary.

Fighting hard to protect yourself and your relatives is good for your genes, but when captured and escape is not possible, giving up short of dying and making the best you can of the new situation is also good for your genes.

I've been doing a lot of learning from mistakes, first and foremost, and building off that.

I feel like I've lived a life of making mistakes and learning from them and doing my best to only make each mistake once.

The packaged food business environment is very Darwinian. You're fighting for survival every year; you evolve and grow or you die. It's really that simple.

What evolution tells us is that we are part of a grand, dynamic, and ever-changing fabric of life that covers our planet. Even to a person of faith, in fact especially to a person of faith, an understanding of the evolutionary process should only deepen their appreciation of the scope and wisdom of the creator's work.