Quotes & Sayings About Hope And Survival

She said a scholarship was my only hope for a future and lent me her private books for the summer. Whenever I opened one, T. Ray said, 'Who do you think you are, Julius Shakespeare?' The man sincerely thought that was Shakespeare's first name, and if you think I should have corrected him, you are ignorant about the art of survival. He also referred to me as Miss Brown-Nose-in-a-Book and occasionally as Miss Emily-Big-Head-Diction. He meant Dickinson, but again, there are things you let go by. — Sue Monk Kidd

In the perspective of our species, life has favored humanity as a whole by promoting as much wealth of variety and options as possible, and has distributed everything using the four winds. Life has given mankind everything it has, without segregation and without consideration of which characteristic or quality best suits the situations or the periods.
Only by having the totality of human characteristics and options can we hope to deal with all periods to come.
Our collective is our key to survival and well-being. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge. — Al Gore

Any kid will tell you that, yes, their music is both an escape and a survival mechanism, and that sometimes the music givesbthem hope and inspiration. It doesn't just placate and pacify. — David Byrne

Mind led body
to the edge of the precipice.
They stared in desire
at the naked abyss.
If you love me, said mind,
take that step into silence.
If you love me, said body,
turn and exist. — Anne Stevenson

Here is the vicious circle: if you feel separate from your organic life, you feel driven to survive; survival -going on living- thus becomes a duty and also a drag because you are not fully with it; because it does not quite come up to expectations, you continue to hope that it will, to crave for more time, to feel driven all the more to go on. — Alan W. Watts

And when hope returns to us, it will be with a passion and power to match every ounce of this crushing despair and pain, every fiery shred of determination that carried us when hope failed. It will claim us with a courage that will make the goddess herself quake and doubt herself. — Rachel L. Schade

[...] what else motivated him to spend hour after hour with me, telling all the details of his story? I quote at length his answer.

"I suffered so much and for so long. Maybe if people read this they will realize that if I can make it,they can make it. Many people suffer only because of what happens in their head; I was also physically being tortured. I had no food. No water. If I can make it so can you. If one depressed person avoids committing suicide then the book is a success.

Be strong. Think positive. If you start to think to the contrary, you are headed to failure. Your mind has to be relaxed as you think about survival. Don't think about death. If you think you are going to die, you will die. You have to survive and think about the future of your life, that life is beautiful! How can you imagine taking your own life? There are challenges and punishment in life but you have to fight! — Jonathan Franklin

There were definitely parts of my character I didn't approve of, and maybe from time to time I had moments when I didn't like myself much. But I got through each day as it came to me, and so far I'd survived every thing life had thrown at me. I could only hope that the survival was worth the price I'd paid. — Charlaine Harris

Through the doorway to choice and hope were the saddest girls I have ever met. Not because someone beat them or because someone molested them or because they were poor or pregnant or even because they put needles in their arms or pills in their mouths or weed in their lungs or alcohol down their ever-constricting throats. They were the saddest girls I have ever met because every one of them had it in her to lose a shot at a self and become her mother. — Lidia Yuknavitch

But I'd worked in IT long enough to know: Hope is a terrible survival trait. My methods were data collection, comparisons of probabilities, and collections of "what if. — Anonymous

Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival. — Michael Shermer

This storm we are in concerns me greatly. Even in the midst of the storm I know the Son shines from behind the clouds and will eventually break through completely. There is hope. Let's impact this change together. — Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.

my friend, we cannot view work as a burden. Work must not be about survival. Work is the place in which we alter the white space before us for good. We must reclaim our place as pioneers of new outcomes, inventors of new solutions, designers of new products, dreamers of new possibilities, and architects of a better tomorrow. We must re-infuse our work with challenge, reward, zest, zeal, fun, laughter, creativity, and unapologetic hope. — Aaron McHugh

'Falling Skies' is not just about aliens attacking. It's also about humanity, survival, hope and the determination to rebuild our world, starting from pretty much nothing. — Maxim Knight

The major enemy of black survival in America has been and is neither oppression nor exploitation but rather the nihilistic threat - that is, loss of hope and absence of meaning. For as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive. The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that without meaning there can be no struggle. — Cornel West

I don't think people can live without hope. What oxygen is to the lungs, hope is to our survival in this world. And the Bible is filled with hope. — Billy Graham

If all you do at work is hope to survive, your day can't be much fun. We're all working too hard. Putting in more hours than we'd like, nervous about the future, uncertain about our roles and our goals. We work too hard to hope for mere survival. Our goal must be to thrive and prosper, not just get by. — Seth Godin

Yet a part of you still believes you can fight and survive no matter what your mind knows. It's not so strange. Where there's still life, there's still hope. What happens is up to God. — Louis Zamperini

It is a human characteristic, which has been richly exploited in every era, that while hope of survival is still alive in a man, while he still believes his troubles will have a favorable outcome, and while he still has the chance to unmask treason or to save someone else by sacrificing himself, he continues to cling to the pitiful remnants of comfort and remains silent and submissive. When he has been taken and destroyed, when he has nothing more to lose, and is, in consequence, ready and eager for heroic action, his belated rage can only spend itself against the stone walls of solitary confinement. Or the breath of the death sentence makes him indifferent to earthly affairs. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Survival was a breeze that touched some and not others. Neither hope nor hopelessness had anything to do with it. — Denis Johnson

I had to stop hoping so much that a ship would rescue me. I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me. In my experience, a castaway's worst mistake is to hope too much and to do too little. Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away. — Yann Martel

The secret of survival was to balance hope and despair — Rohinton Mistry

We need science, more and better science, not for its technology, not for leisure, not even for health or longevity, but for the hope of wisdom which our kind of culture must acquire for its survival. — Lewis Thomas

As he journeyed alone toward the monster that is death, we could do nothing to help him, nor the others still alive; all the words of strength on our lips melted away, our love not great enough to bind them to life, and our hope not enough to will them to live. — Alfred Nestor

Wave after wave has brought to our shores beautiful and mysterious treasures from unknown worlds: figurines, animals, fetishes, masks, ceremonial or useful objects. They are called Primitive for want of a better name ... What could never have been written is there, all the dreams and anguishes of man. The hunger for food and sex and security, the terrors of night and death, the thirst for life and the hope for survival. — Dominique De Menil

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed;
if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may
come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. — Winston S. Churchill

Survival requires a dose of madness - what cynics call "hoping against hope" - just like art does; you conjure your future from white space, locate the hidden person, yourself, against this unfamiliar background, peering through grief and loss at something greater. "Survivors are more urgently rooted in life than most of us," observed one Holocaust expert. "Their will to survive is one with the thrust of life itself, as stubborn as the upsurge of spring. A strange exultation fills [their] soul, a sense of being equal to the worst. — Mark Matousek

Sometimes even now I entertain the hope that Love lives in the world independently of us, but when I am most courageous, I believe that love was born within the human heart, and that the survival of love in the world, as well as its ultimate triumph, is entirely our responsibility. — Catherine M. Wilson

As the earth dies your spirit will bloom; as the world fades your soul will rise and glisten. Amongst the dehydrated crevices of a desert earth you will stumble upon your diamonds; in between the dry skulls and cracked bones you will find your sapphires. — C. JoyBell C.

I've learned that there is no currency like trust and no catalyst like hope. There is nothing worse for building relationships than pandering, on one hand, and preaching, on the other. And the most important quality we must all strengthen in ourselves is that of a deep human empathy, for that will provide the most hope of all
and the foundation for our collective survival. — Jacqueline Novogratz

Experience is a great teacher, and we were then in her school, and learned that while hope offers the faintest token of refuge, we pause upon the fearful brink of eternity, and look back for rescue. — Fanny Kelly

Maybe hope springs eternal in the whale's heart too. I don't know. If you look at the history of species there seems to be no selective advantage to intelligence. It's the microbes who have totally ignored selection for three and a half billion years that remain with us and probably will remain. They seem almost immortal. The process of evolution appears to be about specialization and adaptation and yet these are the very things that seem ultimately to mediate against survival itself. — Cormac McCarthy

People need stories. Stories of love, hope, survival, wisdom and sometimes pain. Maybe you don't tell them the full truth; maybe you tell them lies. But what is this world? A lie in itself. — Savi Sharma

I would think of certain winter nights when he wedged himself between Nona and me in bed, a furtive warmth embedded in his skin already tinctured with virginal earth and milk and possibility, or how that peculiar scent common to all small children before the age of five--sunshine sweetened hair, a nascent woodsiness in him exuding youthful exuberance--gripped us, suspended us eighties in the sense that our hope, our very survival, depended on the fulfillment of this child's dreams. How I took those years I spent for granted, believing them unalterable? pg. 9 — S.K. Kalsi

In the end, He's the only reason that I made it. Sometimes that's the only thing we have. Whether you call it God, or hope, or faith -whatever word you use- the fact is, I couldn't have survived if I hadn't believed in something. It was the one part of me that neither Warren nor Allen could touch, and no matter what happens, as long as I have that, I've won. — Elissa Wall

He sent up another silent prayer to wherever desperate prayers go and took the first step toward what he hoped would be salvation. — Sarah Winter

Paralysis seems to happen on the steepest slope of the survival arc - where almost all hope is lost, when escape seems impossible, and when the situation is unfamiliar to the extreme. — Amanda Ripley

Train yourself. That is your only chance of survival. Train yourself not to be afraid of death and you will never lose hope. — Jessie Jasen

So now you know that, as dark as the depths of the sea may be, as dark as the night gets without a moon, it is not really true darkness. It's just waiting for light to return. There are places that are truly dark in this world, Ven, but this place here, this open stretch of sea where you are floating, is not one of them. It's not really dark here - it's just night. If you hang on and stay awake, in a short while the edges of the sky will start to turn gray, then pink, and the sun will rise, and there will be blue above and all around you again. — Elizabeth Haydon

Survival was more than the preservation of life. It was tenacity in the face of ruin, an unbroken resolve in the midst of defeat, a glimmer of hope in the maelstrom, and peace despite the wreckage. — Jocelyn Murray

The way past despair and false hope is just letting go. It doesn't improve your odds of survival, but it doesn't waste mental energy. — James Alan Gardner

how often do we forget that there is hope as well, and that we seldom think about hope? We are ready to despair too soon, we are ready to say, 'What's the good of doing anything?' Hope is the virtue we should cultivate most in this present day and age. We have made ourselves a Welfare State, which has given us freedom from fear, security, our daily bread and a little more than our daily bread; and yet it seems to me that now, in this Welfare State, every year it becomes more difficult for anybody to look forward to the future. Nothing is worth-while. Why? Is it because we no longer have to fight for existence? Is living not even interesting any more? We cannot appreciate the fact of being alive. Perhaps we need the difficulties of space, of new worlds opening up, of a different kind of hardship and agony, of illness and pain, and a wild yearning for survival? Oh — Agatha Christie

Survival often depends on a specific focus: A relationship, a belief, or a hope balanced on the edge of possibility. Or something more ephemeral: the way the sun passes through the hard seemingly impenetrable glass of a window and warms the blanket, or how the wind, invisible but for its wake, is so loud one can hear it through the insulated walls of a house. — Elisabeth Tova Bailey

The United States ... has been proud of its association with the State of Israel. We shall continue to stand with Israel. We are committed to Israel's survival and security. The United States for a quarter of a century has had an excellent relationship with the State of Israel. We have cooperated in many, many fields - in your security, in the well-being of the Middle East, and in leading what we all hope is a lasting peace throughout the world. — Gerald R. Ford

The future is just your hope, expectation. And when this life is not fulfilling you start looking further, beyond death. All these are fictions just for you to survive somehow. But this survival is not how you are supposed to be. Existence has not given you birth just to live in hopes. You can be really ecstatic this moment, and there is no other moment. Meditation is, Zen is living now and here. — Rajneesh

I think my government are fascists. I feel that if we don't change from a society that worships money and power over to one that worships compassion and generosity, there is no hope for human survival this century. — Patch Adams

The secret to living fully is to find your passion and pursue it. — Ronald Louis Peterson

I couldn't comprehend why she still hadn't stopped him because it's clearly every mother's responsibility to protect her children. After all, that's the trust that bonds a mother and her child together, forever — Veronika Gasparyan

Our genetic dispositions have a basis here- dispositions to dominate and to herd together for the sake of survival, to wander alone in hope of revelation, instinctively to seek more in order to allay fear of scarcity, and to stand silently, if only for a moment, in humility, and awe at all that exists beyond ourselves. — Richard Leo

The Great stories give us the hope and the courage to survive life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Sorry Johnny."
"Sorry for what "
"For shouting at you. It's just that when I think about the future I keep panicking. It's like falling from the top of the stairs in the dark not knowing where I'll end up."
He put his arm around my shoulders. "I understand. Life is precarious for most of us but more so for you. What you forget is what most of your friends see in you."
"What's that "
"The ability to beat the odds ... "
"And fall on my feet "
He nodded.
"I just hope that lasts."
"It will Catkin it will. It wouldn't dare fail you. — Julia Golding

From the night into his high-walled room there came, persistently, that evanescent and dissolving sound - something the city was tossing up and calling back again, like a child playing with a ball. In Harlem, the Bronx, Gramercy Park, and along the water-fronts, in little parlors or on pebble-strewn, moon-flooded roofs, a thousand lovers were making this sound, crying little fragments of it into the air. All the city was playing with this sound out there in the blue summer dark, throwing it up and calling it back, promising that, in a little while, life would be beautiful as a story, promising happiness - and by that promise giving it. It gave love hope in its own survival. It could do no more. — F Scott Fitzgerald

It not only is a complete undermining of the principles of family and marriage and the hope of future generations, but it completely begins to see our society break down to the extent that that foundational unit of the family that is the hope of survival of this country is diminished to the extent that it literally is a threat to the nation's survival in the long run. — Trent Franks

Can you imagine growing up in a culture where you can never ask anyone anything about themselves? Where "How are you?" is considered a personal question that one is not obligated to answer? Where you are trained to always wait for others to first mention what is troubling them, even as you are trained to never mention what is troubling you? It must be a survival skill left over from the old Viking days, when long silences were required to prevent unnecessary homicides during the long, dark winters when quarters were close and supplies were dwindling. While — Hope Jahren

Hope is the supernatural grace of God for
survival of hard times. — Lailah Gifty Akita

There are casualties in war. Those who don't make it back to a place of sound hopes and dreams. Some take on their demons alone. They are deceived into fearlessness and trampled by the hooves of their oppressor.
Besides intervention, there is little justice for the thousands-upon-thousands hacked to pieces all around us.
How dare we try to take life to the next level. Instead of merely protecting ourselves or scrounging up our next meal, we have the audacity to hope for something more - a witness for our lives who will survive alongside us. — Christopher Hawke

At a time when unbridled greed, malignant aggression, and existence of weapons of mass destruction threatens the survival of humanity, we should seriously consider any avenue that offers some hope. — Stanislav Grof

The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old age pensions, government relief for the destitute, and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life. — Martin Luther King Jr.

He pulled me back to him, stroking my hair as if to calm me. Tears sprang to my eyes and melted into the water around me. I didn't want to die. But people died every day. What hope I had for heaven's existence faded away, and I realized I would simply disappear. — Kirby Howell

The ups and downs, the problems and stress, along with all the happiness, have given me optimism and hope because I am living proof of survival. — Elizabeth Taylor

We will not die cornered and cowering in the ruins of a dead city. — Rachel L. Schade

We need an inclusive world not merely because of the fear of our survival. We need it because hope is feasible. We need it because dreaming is good and aspirations are essential. We need it because every citizen of the earth can become a participant. We need it because the tomorrow is ours. We need it because the impossible is often possible." (Sundeep Waslekar, Nelson Mandela Benefit Speech, Dubai, December 16, 2005) — Sundeep Waslekar

Though all three men faced the same hardship, their differing perceptions of it appeared to be shaping their fates. Louie and Phil's hope displaced their fear and inspired them to work toward their survival, and each success renewed their physical and emotional vigor. Mac's resignation seemed to paralyze him and the less he participated in their efforts to survive, the more he slipped. Though he did the least, as the days passed, it was he who faded the most. Louie and Phil's optimism, and Mac's hopelessness, were becoming self-fulfilling. — Laura Hillenbrand

Only with people and among people do we stand a chance of and among people do we stand a chance of carrying on without going insane. We cannot in fact bear to be alone for very long, Reger said, we believe we can be alone, we believe we can be left on our own, we persuade ourselves that we can manage on our own, Reger said, but this is a chimera. Without people we have not the slightest hope of survival, Reger said, no matter how many great minds and old masters we have taken on as companions, they do not replace a human being — Thomas Bernhard

If we have any hope for survival of the music that we all love, compassion must replace name-calling, fairness must replace greed, and we need to come together as a musical community and try to understand each other's problems. — John Mellencamp

I know it is difficult to believe in your own courage or fortitude when everything inside of you feels weak and shattered. But do not believe what you feel. You will not be easily broken. — Rachel L. Schade

No matter what the odds, a man does not pin his last hope for survival on something and then expect that it will fail. — Alfred Lansing

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival. — Wendell Berry

A young man needs to know where he stands in the world, not just as a matter of basic human dignity but as determinants in the ways and means of survival, and what you might hope to gain by application of honest effort - — Ben Fountain

We have survived the death of our childhood. We are soldiers now, maybe the last soldiers who will ever fight, the Earth's final and only hope, united as one in the spirit of vengeance. — Rick Yancey

But for the overcrowded, for those who have little or nothing except, sometimes, courage and love, hope works differently. Hope is then something to bite on, to put between the teeth. Don't forget this. Be a realist. With hope between the teeth comes the strength to carry on even when fatigue never lets up, comes strength, when necessary, to choose not to shout at the wrong moment, comes the strength above all not to howl. A person, with hope between her or his teeth, is a brother or sister who commands respect. — John Berger

Sweet, loveable, and with every click revealing a new surprise, 'Botanicula' creates both a wonderful world where bees and twigs play in the universe and sets up a daring story of a group of unlikely heroes taking on a tree's last hope of survival. — Rob Manuel

I have experienced deep despair, mental-ill health and attempt of suicide. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Fear is a survival response. Fear makes us run, it makes us leap, it can make us act superhuman. But we need somewhere to run to. Without that, the fear is only paralyzing. So the real trick, the only hope, really, is to allow the terror of an unlivable future to be balanced and soothed by the prospect of building something much better than many of us have previously dared hope. — Naomi Klein

It is my hope that this book helps those who know and love people with DID: family members, lovers, coworkers, and friends. It is also my hope that those charged with intervening in families in which there is violence will take away a more nuanced approach to their important work, informed by a deeper understanding of trauma.
Most of all, I hope that those of you who have DID know that the disorder itself is an incredible survival technique. You should feel proud to have survived. Trauma has had a major impact on my life, as it has on yours, but I've learned that my life extends beyond the pain and darkness. Survivors of trauma are full of life, creativity, courage, and love. We are more than the sum of our parts. — Olga Trujillo

Otter is the most brilliant mix of facts ancient and modern about the otter species and its vulnerability to man's seemingly insatiable need to hunt the poor animal for reasons other than survival. I am sure the book will help to ensure that the hunting of otters will never return to this country-and I hope other lands will follow this example ... A fascinating and illuminating book. — Virginia McKenna

Knowing that this is what it means to live. That this love, this need is what drives us to push and fight and build and grow. That as long as there's hope and love in this world, there will always be the living. — Carrie Ryan

However much he denied it, he always hoped that they'd be kinder to each other one day, like people who were grateful to survive something instead of people still fighting to survive. Wherever that small seed of hope resided, it no longer exists, and what they were to each other is what they will always be. Tethered somehow. Dawn together by a force that should've kept them close but repelled them instead. — Jung Yun

You ought to find the joy, hope and love of existence. — Lailah Gifty Akita

When a bull is being lead to the slaughter, it still hopes to break loose and trample its butchers. Other bulls have not been able to pass on the knowledge that this never happens and that from the slaughterhouse there is no way back to the herd. But in human society there is a continuous exchange of experience. I have never heard of a man who broke away and fled while being led to his execution. It is even thought to be a special form of courage if a man about to be executed refuses to be blindfolded and dies with his eyes open. But I would rather have the bull with his blind rage, the stubborn beast who doesn't weigh his chances of survival with the prudent dull-wittedness of man, and doesn't know the despicable feeling of despair. — Nadezhda Mandelstam

Life in general was cruel and offered only different types of voids and chaos. The only way to tolerate it, to have any hope of escaping it, I reasoned, was to know my own strength, to defy life by surviving it. — Lucy Grealy

This life required scars,...
Some were on the outside, and some they carried on the inside.

But scars weren't shameful. They meant survival. They meant putting in work.

They meant sticking around and getting through the hard stuff just on the chance that things could get better. — T.S. Joyce

In river rescues, members of the Kansas City Fire Department rescue squad yell profanity-laced threats at victims before they get to them. If they don't, the victim will grab on to them and push them under the water in a mad scramble to stay afloat. "We try to get their attention. And we don't always use the prettiest language," says Larry Young, a captain in the rescue division. "I hope I don't offend you by saying this. But if I approach Mrs. Suburban Housewife and say, 'When I get to you, do not fucking touch me! I will leave you if you touch me!' she tends to listen. — Amanda Ripley

In Wright Morris's novel Plains Song, the narrator asks, "Is the past a story we are persuaded to believe, in the teeth of the life we endure in the present?" The question is always open. How we treat our world and each other grows from our vision of how we have come to where we are. Ultimately, of course, the issue is not survival but decency and common sense. Everything passes, the psalmist reminds us. No one escapes. The best we can hope is to learn a little from the speaking dead, to find in our deep past some help in acting wisely in the teeth of life. — Elliott West