adaptability quotes

If humans were totally unstructured creatures, they would be… a tool which can properly be shaped by outside forces.

Perhaps I can say that I am a bit astute, that I can adapt to circumstances, but it is also true that I am a bit naive. Yes, but the best summary, the one that comes more from the inside and I feel most true is this: I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

Remember that life’s big changes rarely give advance warning.

Why should I be studying for a future that soon may not exist?

I adapt and I adjust to whatever environment I’m in.

Always fall in with what you’re asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever’s going. Not against: with.

A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens.

If the team keeps changing then everything has to keep changing.

My company survives because I’ve learned to respect the ideas of people younger than me and recognize when my wisdom is obsolete.

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.

In order to govern, the question is not to follow out a more or less valid theory but to build with whatever materials are at hand. The inevitable must be accepted and turned to advantage.

I think politicians really go with the tide.

We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.

What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.

As a leader, you have to have the ability to assimilate new information and understand that there might be a different view.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

I have learned to interface – what I think would be the contemporary term – with various different lexicons, and people speak very different languages. I’ve learned to speak in a lot of tongues, and I can live with the bellicose language of some fervent, fire-breathing Christians, sure.

When I was 5, some financial things happened, and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment, sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say, ‚Don’t get comfortable, because we may not be here long.‘

Fit no stereotypes. Don’t chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team’s mission.

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

I had noticed that many of these successful people, historical and contemporary, shared certain common traits. They had a way of thinking that was exceptionally fluid; they could adapt to almost any circumstance; when confronted with problems, they could look at them from novel perspectives and solve them.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

In business, if you realize you’ve made a bad decision, you change it.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

There is nothing permanent except change.

I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. No matter what the injury – unless it’s completely debilitating – I’m going to be the same player I’ve always been. I’ll figure it out. I’ll make some tweaks, some changes, but I’m still coming.

You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don’t believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can’t possibly foresee now.

Nothing endures but change.

Perhaps if you are in support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading. Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed that luxury.

One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

Wherever the enemy wants to fight, we will follow him to the ends of the Earth. We’ll adapt, we’ll train, we’ll advise, we’ll mentor, and we’ll fight, and we’ll fight well.

We have to abandon the idea that schooling is something restricted to youth. How can it be, in a world where half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 – and half the things he knows at 40 hadn’t been discovered when he was 20?

If there’s one thing that’s certain in business, it’s uncertainty.

Nobody’s indispensable.

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.

What’s coming will come and we’ll just have to meet it when it does.

The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

Yeah, I wasn’t chosen to be first. I was just chosen to command that flight. Circumstance put me in that particular role. That wasn’t planned by anyone.

Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.

Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that’s going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.