Madison Grant Quotes

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

The strong live and the weak die. There is some bloodshed, and out of it emerges a much leaner industry, which tends to survive.

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.

I think competition is the best thing for everyone. Competition is what makes us evolve, from when we were itty bitty little tadpoles in prehistoric times to what we've turned into now. Competition makes us evolve and makes us push ourselves better.

Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.

You adapt, evolve, compete or die.

Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.

This is the law of the Yukon, that only the strong shall thrive; that surely the weak shall perish, and only the fit survive.

We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.

The strongest oak of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

All species capable of grasping this fact manage better in the struggle for existence than those which rely upon their own strength alone: the wolf, which hunts in a pack, has a greater chance of survival than the lion, which hunts alone.

For science, the end of the evolution struggle is simply represented by 'survival.' As for the means to that end, apparently anything goes. Darwinism leaves humanity without a moral compass.

We have enforced a Darwinian process on wolves, turning them into the shy and elusive animals they've become. They didn't have that fear of us 30,000 years ago. We didn't have gunpowder; we had rocks. Wolves would have seen us as lunch, and we were weak and slow and tasty.

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.

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.

In October, 1838, … I happened to read for amusement Malthus on population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long continuous observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work

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.

The strong were always eating the weak.