Samuel Butler (novelist) Quote

[An] organism must act in one or other of these two ways: It must either change slowly and continuously with the surroundings, paying cash for everything, meeting the smallest change with a corresponding modification so far as is found convenient; or it must put off change as long as possible, and then make larger and more sweeping changes.

God the Known and God the Unknown, Introduction (p. 14), Yale University Press. 1917