Constrained optimization is the art of compromise between conflicting objectives. This is what design is all about. To find fault with biological design - as Stephen Jay Gould regularly does - because it misses some idealized optimum is therefore gratuitous. Not knowing the objectives of the designer, Gould is in no position to say whether the designer has proposed a faulty compromise among those objectives.

It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.

Frederick Douglass

We are made for larger ends than Earth can encompass. Oh, let us be true to our exalted destiny.

Catherine Booth

And I'm not as young as I once was. At my age, I don't have time to be bored.

Lev Grossman

Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.

Ronald Reagan

The concept of total wellness recognizes that our every thought, word, and behavior affects our greater health and well-being. And we, in turn, are affected not only emotionally but also physically and spiritually.

Greg Anderson

I think women are excellent social critics.

Laurie Anderson

If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love- You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.

C.S. Lewis

People often ask, why aren't you reading about what it is you're working on right now? And the truth is, you only get three pages a night before your eyelids close.

David Petraeus

The weather being hot, he had no cravat, and wore his shirt collar wide open; so that every time he spoke something was seen to twitch and jerk up in his throat, like the little hammers in a harpsichord when the notes are struck. Perhaps it was the Truth feebly endeavouring to leap to his lips. If so, it never reached them.

Charles Dickens

We must force the government to stop the bird migration. We must shoot all birds, field all our men and troops... and force migratory birds to stay where they are.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky

How you measure the performance of your managers directly affects the way they act.

John Dearden

Telling lies does not work in advertising.

Tim Bell