Quotes & Sayings About Killing To Survive

Since the bigger gorillas leave chimps only a fraction of the quantity of food bonobos get, each chimp must fight ferociously to survive, including killing other chimpanzees — Eliot Schrefer

As much as I am a huge soccer fan, music just kills it when it comes to importance. I could go to a desert island without a football and survive happily, but if I had to go without music, I think I'd end up killing myself. It fuels my soul. It always has. — Joe Elliott

Fear is killing us, but true love can survive. If we cooperate, we can beat doubt. But first, rebuild trust. Take responsibility. Happiness is still free, though not always apparent when it's right in front of us. So keep calm, it's gonna get better. — Patrick Stump

And yet, the fact that we are no longer killing people for heresy in the West suggests that bad ideas, however sacred, cannot survive the company of good ones forever. — Sam Harris

The dying tapers off now and then, but the War is still killing lots and lots of people. Only right now it is killing them in more subtle ways. Often in ways that are too complicated, even for us, at this level, to trace. But the right people are dying, just as they do when armies fight. The ones who stand up, in Basic, in the middle of the machine-gun pattern. The ones who do not have faith in their Sergeants. The ones who slip and show a moment's weakness to the Enemy. These are the ones the War cannot use, and so they die. The right ones survive. The others, it's said, even know they have a short life expectancy. But they persist in acting the way that they do. Nobody knows why. Wouldn't it be nice if we could eliminate them completely? Then no one would have to be killed in the War. — Thomas Pynchon

During World War I the Canadians were the shock troops. In many historical cases, Canadians have been very proficient at killing, and doing what we have to in order to survive. But no one wants to acknowledge that fact. — Joseph Boyden

Imagine that you're an intelligent extraterrestrial, concerned only with verifiable truths. You discover a species that has divided itself into thousands - no, by now millions - of tribal groups holding an incredible variety of beliefs about the origin of the universe and the way to behave in it. Although many of them have ideas in common, even when there's 99% overlap, the remaining one percent's enough to set them killing and torturing each other, over trivial points of doctrine, utterly meaningless to outsiders. How to account for such irrational behavior? ( ... ) religion was the by-product of fear - a reaction to a mysterious and often hostile universe. For much of human prehistory, it may have been a necessary evil - but why was it so much more evil than necessary - and why did it survive when it was no longer necessary? — Arthur C. Clarke

Never admit defeat and ask for a quick death! Die first, then admit defeat! If you are defeated but didn't die, it just means you were lucky! At those times, think only about survival! Survive and think only about killing the one who failed to kill you!
~Kenpachi Zaraki — Tite Kubo

I simply don't understand. I have not the remotest clue what the nature or extent of my neighbor's woes can be. Practical troubles, griefs that can be assuaged if only there is enough to eat - these may be the most intense of all burning hells, horrible enough to blast to smithereens my ten misfortunes, but that is precisely what I don't understand: if my neighbors manage to survive without killing themselves, without going mad, maintaining an interest in political parties, not yielding to despair, resolutely pursuing the fight for existence, can their griefs really be genuine? Am I wrong in thinking that these people have become such complete egoists and are so convinced of the normality of their way of life that they have never once doubted themselves? — Osamu Dazai

Long time I been on my own, but now really I'm alone. I survive the killing, the starving, all the hate of the Khmer Rouge, but I think maybe now I will die of this, of broken heart. — Patricia McCormick

What we discovered, counter-intuitively, is that when you start killing a cancer cell, one of the things it does in order to survive is to spread even further. It causes itself to form new blood vessels. We've termed this 'reactionary angiogenesis.' — Patrick Soon-Shiong

Simple
Complex systems can arise
from simple rules.
It's not
that we want to survive,
it's that we've been drugged
and made to act
as if we do
while all the while
the sea breaks
and rolls, painlessly, under.
If we're not copying it,
we're lonely.
Is this the knowledge
that demands to be
passed down?
Time is made from swatches
of heaven and hell.
If we're not killing it,
we're hungry. — Rae Armantrout

So much of life hurt, so much of it had been lost. The only way I knew how to survive was to shut everything off, or at least try to. To bury everything I felt down deep inside me, hiding the happiness along with the sadness. But it was killing me. I was exhausted from fighting it, from trying to keep everything inside me inside. And as much as I'd tried to do this all on my own, the one thing I knew for sure was that I couldn't. I needed people. — Amanda Hocking

We're a people at war,' she began, voice loud and clear. 'We're constantly attacked - but not just by Strigoi. By one another. We're divided. We fight with one another. Family against family. Royal against non-royal. Moroi against dhampir. Of course the Strigoi are picking us off. They're at least united behind a goal: killing.'
[ ... ]
'We are one people,' she continued. 'Moroi and dhampir alike.' Yeah, that got some gasps too. 'And while it's impossible for every single person to get their way, no one will get anything done if we don't come together and find ways to meet in the middle - even if it means making hard choices.'
[ ... ]
We've kept magic alongside technology. We conduct these sessions with scrolls and - with these.' She smiled and tapped her microphone. 'That's how we have survived. We hold onto our That's how we have survived. That's how we will survive. — Richelle Mead

Since homo sapiens can survive only by unrestrained racial killing, a Jewish triumph of reason over impulse would mean the end of the species. What a race needed, thought Hitler, was a "worldview" that permitted it to triumph, which meant, in the final analysis, "faith" in its own mindless mission. — Timothy Snyder

You know, when you go into the store and buy a box of laundry detergent, and the price has gone up - you know, 50 cents because of regulations ... And everything is costing more money, and we are killing our people like this ... It's the evil government that is putting all these regulations on us so that we can't survive. — Benjamin Carson

...sometimes it just sort of floods in on you that you survive by killing other creatures, and you get a little sad. An excellent point, said his dad. But at least you are sensitive to it. That's a step in the right direction...at least you have a certain respect and honesty about the system. That's good. That's a step toward reverence. Better that than the arrogant assumption that you can kill anything you like any time you like. That's the wrong direction. That direction leads to more killing. Trust me on this one. — Brian Doyle

If my neighbors manage to survive without killing themselves, without going mad, maintaining an interest in political parties, not yielding to despair, resolutely pursuing the fight for existence, can their griefs really be genuine? — Osamu Dazai

I think the measure of advancement depends on where you are stood and from what distance you look. A thousand years ago, we farmed the fields, built towns and defended our land with swords and spears. It is little different now, save for the number of people we have to protect. We still kill with a sharp edge or point of metal, blood runs red still, sons ride off to war and parents grieve. If you look at the Empire in its whole, then it is peaceful. If you look closely, you will see the small wars, the bandits and rebellions. Look more closely still and you'll see the petty crimes, the struggle to survive, the rich bleeding the poor. Even the soil can turn against its farmers, yielding few crops. Or the weather, a late frost killing the early crops. There is strife and conflict everywhere in the Empire. Everywhere you find men, you find conflict. — G.R. Matthews

Keisuke: "It's alright for you to kill someone?"
Akira: "As long as they have tags. According to the rules, if there's three people present, it's an official battle. I'm not sure how you're supposed to start it, though."
Keisuke: "So killing people is just a game, huh?"
Akira: "It's the only way to survive. — Suguro Chayamachi

In protests against the killing of Michael Brown, relegitimizing the police has taken the form of demands for police accountability, for citizens' review boards, for police to wear cameras - as if more surveillance could possibly be a good thing for those too poor to survive within the law in the first place. — Anonymous

Eloise?' Phillip asked, his brows shooting up when they both heard someone bellow her name.
She felt the blood drain from her body. Positively felt it, *knew* it had happened, even though she couldn't see it pooling about her feet. There was no way she could survive a moment such as this, no way she could make it through without killing someone, preferably someone to whom she was quite closely related. — Julia Quinn

Humans are only one species of millions. To kill millions of species for the benefit of one is insane, just as killing millions of people for the benefit of one person would be insane. And since unimpeded ecological collapse would kill off humans anyway, those species will ultimately have died for nothing, and the planet will take millions of years to recover. Rapid collapse is ultimately good for humans because at least some people survive. And remember, the people who need the system to come down the most are the rural poor in the majority of the world: the faster the actionists can bring down industrial civilization, the better the prospects for those people and their landbases. Regardless, without immediate action, everyone dies. — Aric McBay

I turned to Grey again. "The point is, killing someone is almost never the smart move, long term. Sometimes it's got to be done if you want to survive - but the more you do it, the more you risk creating more enemies and buying yourself even more trouble." Grey seemed to consider that for a moment, and then shrugged. "The argument is not entirely without merit. Tell me, wizard, does it give you some sort of satisfaction to protect this man? — Jim Butcher

The merely conscious being does not have a preference for continued life. Perhaps while having a pleasurable experience it has a preference for that experience to continue, or while having a painful experience it has a preference for that experience to end, but it will not have any preferences for the long-term future, and the desires it has do not survive periods of sleep or temporary unconsciousness, because unlike a self-aware being, it has no conception of its own future existence after a period of sleep. Thus if we are concerned only about the thwarting of preferences, for a merely conscious being, painless killing and administering an anesthetic seem to be equivalent. Killing does not thwart any more desires than putting the being to sleep. The being will be able to continue to satisfy its preferences after it awakes, but from the being's subjective perspective it is as if a new being, with new preferences, came into existence. — Peter Singer