Inspirational Survival Quotes & Sayings

There seems to be a mountain of obstacles preventing people from being where their hearts want to be. It is so painful to watch and experience. The astonishing thing is that the battle for survival has become so "normal" that few people really believe that it can be different ... Oh how important is discipline, community, prayer, silence, caring presence, simple listening, adoration, and deep, lating faithful friendship. We all want it so much, and still the powers suggesting that all of that is fantasy are enormous. But we have to replace the battle for power with the battle to create space for the spirit. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Oh God T.J., I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking Nothing like going on about having kids in front of someone whose fertility had been exchanged for survival. — Tracey Garvis-Graves

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

Dying for someone is easy." J.T. murmured now; as if reading my mind."Living for yourself, that's hard. — Lisa Gardner

The good news is you survived. The bad news is you're hurt and no one can heal you but yourself. — Clementine Von Radics

Only those who are able to adapt to changing scenarios will continue to survive and prosper. Success is directly proportional to the degree of positive adaptation to change. — Vishwas Chavan

I kept getting the odd sensation that I was in fact perfectly stationary, and that I was pushing the world around under my feet. — Robyn Davidson

This life is like a game, so you better play it right! — Jonathan Anthony Burkett

Adaptation is the key to survival. — Lailah Gifty Akita

It's not always about survival, this life we are given; it's usually so much easier than that. It's about trusting the eternal life force that is flowing within us-letting that force lead the way through all of the inevitable changes we will face across the span of our time here on Earth. — Elizabeth Lesser

[...] 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

Love is the most powerful healing force of all. But past
demons have a way of ripping open old wounds, and
threatening the survival of even the strongest friendship ... — Cherrie Lynn

I need to be startlingly clear. This thing of finding your authentic voice, expressing your blessed weirdness and revealing your soul isn't an elegant process. You don't do it to be cool. You don't do it to get laid or get rich. It's only real when it is ruthless, relentless and inevitable. But it is also a matter of personal and collective survival. Yes, it's that important. You are that critical. — Jacob Nordby

It is only by loving others that we can learn to live; living is rare nowadays ... most people survive; that is all. — Sandra Chami Kassis

The question is not whether a community lives or dies, the question is on what plane does it live? There are different modes of survival. But all are not equally honorable. — B.R. Ambedkar

We all have our personal Andes. — Nando Parrado

None of us are unique in our suffering. But we are unique in our survival. — Penelope Douglas

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. — Winston S. Churchill

The good thing about problems is that they all have solutions. — Tag Cavello

Survival my only hope. Success my only revenge — Patricia Cornwell

There will come a time when man is no longer concerned only with survival, when he will once more be curious as to who came before him, what life was like a thousand years ago, and he will seek out answers for a hundred years or so, but humans' curiosity has always driven them to find answers. — Julie Kagawa

The women of the Malesian Tales were however modelled after the lovely women of Singapore, the most urbane of the Malesian cities & the winners of the War of the Sexes.These lovely women,who belonged to a unique sub-species known as the "Singapore Girl", were spawn when the little City State imposed draconian measures in order to ensure its survival- measures covering population control, civic-consciousness, national hygiene & military preparedness- just as Sparta did during Milesian times. And thus, the Singapore girls,just as the girls of Sparta, were constantly in a state of military preparedness when it came to men.[INTRO] — Nicholas Chong

She was alone and destitute in a world of pointless carnage. By an eight-hundred-year-old Sepahrdic tradition she ad been since the age of twelve and a half "bogeret l'reshut nafsha"
an adult wit authority over her own soul. The Torah taught, Choose life. And so, rather than die of pride, Sofia Mendes sold what she had to sell, and she survived. — Mary Doria Russell

Knowing the Techniques of Survival ...
Our fears and anxieties will often drive us to build impenetrable walls that act like blinders deflecting others and preventing us from seeing who surrounds us. Getting focused to the things that matter are the Key to what has to be to COMPLETE our MISSION. "I Had Every Excuse to Fail but I Chose None" Speak Life!!!
(sky) — Sebastian K. Young

You know, I once read an interesting book which said that, uh, most people lost in the wilds, they, they die of shame. Yeah, see, they die of shame. 'What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?' And so they sit there and they ... die. Because they didn't do the one thing that would save their lives. Thinking. — David Mamet

Sometimes you have to leave yourself to the mercy of someone else. Not because you are weak or less powerful, but just because nature wants it that way.
The earth revolves around the sun; even its ego can't change that as it's the very basis of its survival. I had left myself to the mercy of God, believing He would help keep me going and still continue to be around. — Shikha Kaul

And so in time the rowboat and I became one and the same-like the archer and his bow or the artist and his paint. What I learned wasn't mastery over the elements; it was mastery over myself, which is what conquest is ultimately all about. — Richard Bode

The way surviving hard winters makes a tree grows stronger, the growth rings inside it tighter — Haruki Murakami

Use your strength, but always remember that any strength
may become a weakness. — Kateryna Kei

I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned.
Adult. You have become adult. — Harlan Ellison

You need to be proud of the fact that you survived everything you went through as a child. Don't seperate yourself from that life. Embrace it, because I'm so fucking proud of you. — Colleen Hoover

Tomorrow is promised to no one so live your life fully everyday. — Therese Crutcher-Marin

I come from a plane that fell into the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for ten days. I have a friend up here who is injured. In the plane there is fourteen injured people. We have to get of here quickly and we don't have any food. We are weak. When are you going to come and fetch us? Please. We can't even walk. Where are we? — Nando Parrado

One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. — Martin Luther King Jr.

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.

Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master.
This was the important thing.
It had always been the important thing.
This was what it was to be Adam. — Maggie Stiefvater

Hope is an anchor for the soul. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Our ability to transcend betrayal is directly tied to our willingness to identify ourselves as love activists rather than victims of the Universe. — Lyna Jones

Survivors and prevailers are those who love themselves above failure and everything else except the abstract and mysterious. — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

For basic survival, as for evolution, we have to accept the past as the creator of the present, influence the future, and act in the present. — Daniel Egger

We are all fighters. It is basic human nature. We strive to get somewhere in life or we fight for survival. — Sarah Castille

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

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without vicory there is no survival. — Winston S. Churchill

As we used to say in the mountains, "Breathe. Breathe again. With every breath, you are alive." After all these years, this still the best advice I can give you: Savor your existence. Live every moment. Do not waste a breath. — Nando Parrado

Tough times don't last, tough people do, remember? — Gregory Peck

The trick at every turn was to endure the test of living for as long as possible. The odds of survival were punishingly slim, for the world was naught by a school of calamity and an endless burning furnace of tribulation. But those who survived the world shaped it
even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The anchor of my life is the grace of God. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The potential for loss of soul
to one degree or another
is the affliction of a society that as a collective has lost its sense of the holy, of a culture that values everything else above the spiritual. We live in such a spiritually impoverished culture
and in such a time. Loss of soul, to one degree or another, is a constant teasing possibility. We are invited at every corner to hedge on the truth, indulge outselves, act as if our words and actions have no ultimate consequence, make an absolute of the material world, and treat the spiritual world as if it were some kind of frothy, angelic fantasy. In such a world the soul struggles for survival; in such a world a man can lose his own soul and have the whole culture support him, and in such a world, conversely, the light of a single, great soul that lives in integrity can truly illumine the world. — Daphne Rose Kingma

It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another. — Dan Simmons

The scientific revolution proved that there are objective, discernible laws of physical phenomena. Take gravity, for instance. You don't exactly have faith in the law of gravity so much as you just know that the law is the law. Now we are learning that there are objective, discernible laws of non-physical phenomena. These two sets of laws are parallel. Externally, the universe supports our physical survival. Photosynthesis in plants and plankton in the ocean produce oxygen, which we need in order to breathe. Internally the universe also supports our survival. Emotionally and psychologically the internal equivalent to oxygen, what we need in order to survive, is love. And human relationships exist to produce love. — Marianne Williamson

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art ... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival. — C.S. Lewis

Be clear about the purpose of money. Money is like health. It is necessary for survival but it is not what you live for. — Ernie J Zelinski

For an individual as well as a society, there is a gulf between merely living and living worthily. To fight in a battle and live in glory is one mode. To beat a retreat, to surrender and to live the life of a captive is also a mode of survival. — B.R. Ambedkar

It's total bullshit," he said. "The whole thing. Eighty percent survival rate and he's in the twenty percent? Bullshit. He was such a bright kid. It's bullshit. I hate it. But it was sure a privilege to love him, huh? — John Green

Scars are not signs of weakness, they are signs of survival and endurance. — Rodney A. Winters

Dare to conquer your soul. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The topic of compassion is not at all religious business; it is important to know it is human business, it is a question of human survival. — Dalai Lama XIV

Hope is the anchor of life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Rationality is man's basic virtue, the source of all his other virtues. Man's basic vice, the source of all evils, is the act of unfocussing his mind, the suspension of his conciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know. Irrationality is the rejection of man's means of survival and therefore, a commitment to a course of blind destruction; that is anti-mind, anti-life. — Ayn Rand

I can't believe that we have reached the end of everything. The red dust is frightening. The carbon dioxide is real. Water is expensive. Bio-tech has created as many problems as it has fixed, but we're here, we're alive, we're the human race, we have survived wars and terrorism and scarcity and global famine, and we have made it back from the brink, not once but many times. History is not a suicide note - it's a record of our survival. — Jeanette Winterson

Each of us is called upon to take a stand. So in these days ahead, as we examine ourselves and each other, our works, our fears, our differences, our sisterhood and survivals, I urge you to tackle what is most difficult for us all, self-scrutiny of our complacencies, the idea that since each of us believes she is on the side of right, she need not examine her position. — Audre Lorde

You can overcome any situation with positive attitude. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The human species' foremost task and unshakable duty is survival. — Carlos J. Cortes

Reflections they give me
That my mirror does not
They know the new me
Not the old me
That I am not — Kathleen Marie

Luck often comes to those who are brave. — Kateryna Kei

They forget that we, too, have earned the right to live! So I say if we are going to die, my friend, let us die trying, not sitting. — Velma Wallis

You can endure all things by grace. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Lina couldn't sleep at first, thinking of the old songs and what they meant. Someone, long ago, had hoped that at least a few people would survive and had wanted them to remember her city and the treasure it held, the treasure that was most valuable of all - herself, her family, and all of the generations of people who had lived in that secret place, their purpose, though they didn't know it, to make sure that human beings did not vanish from the world, no matter what happened above. — Jeanne DuPrau

Our awareness about ourselves and the world around us is so limited that we are ready to destroy ourselves. For the survival of humanity, an evolution of consciousness is essential. — Debasish Mridha

False reasons trapped in your old bean. Failure isn't your nemesis, denial of truth is. — Ymatruz

Finding your bliss can make survival seem like. And a strange thing happens along the way when you love what you are doing: you become good at it. — Sharon Law Tucker

You don't know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I'm the little jew who wrote the Bible.
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival. — Leonard Cohen

You only have to view life in a positive way. — Lailah Gifty Akita

A scar signifies past pain, a wound that did not heal as it ought. But it testifies, too, to survival ... (Here be Dragons) — Sharon Kay Penman

It can't be more than a quarter of a mile to the finish, but it seems to go on forever. Do I really have to do this? My legs are entirely dead. Would it really matter if I stopped here?
But I know I'd regret it if I did, so I plod leadenly on, distracting myself...with the thought that, whatever troubles I may have been carrying around in my head before the race, I have now entirely forgotten what they were. This thought is rather refreshing. Whatever physical pains it has involved, this ordeal has utterly absorbed me, forcing my brain to focus on the kind of concerns for which it evolved - navigation, survival, balance, digging deep - rather than on the fretful urban anxieties to which it has become habituated. Reconnecting with your inner animal, I suppose you could call it; and it feels good. Especially when, blissfully, I catch sight of the finish. — Richard Askwith

The greatest miracle of my life is a second chance to live life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Our passions, when well exercised, have wisdom; they guide our thinking, our values, our survival. — Daniel Goleman

Trees are like people and give the answers to the way of Man. They grow from the top down. Children, like treetops, have flexibility of youth, and sway more than larger adults at the bottom. They are more vulnerable to the elements, and are put to the test of survival by life's strong winds, rain, freezing cold, and hot sun. Constantly challenged. As they mature, they journey down the tree, strengthening the family unit until one day they have become big hefty branches. In the stillness below, having weathered the seasons, they now relax in their old age, no longer subject to the stress from above. It's always warmer and more enclosed at the base of the tree. The members remain protected and strong as they bear the weight and give support to the entire tree. They have the endurance. — Ralph Helfer