Quotes & Sayings About Survival

...most ghosts are a rag and a bone and a hank of hair at best--a memory fragment stuck on continual loop, just dust and PKE and water-vapour with no real "there" there. Leftover fragments of psychic energy deluded into believing in their own personality; an echo cobbled together from memory and pain, with no self-awareness as such 'cept what we give them. Survival instinct, with no survival. — Gemma Files

I'm sure we all have dreams of leaving at some time in our lives, but when we reach the bottom, most of us go running home. — Deborah Curtis

Like their modern counterparts, and unlike traditional warriors, Byzantine soldiers were normally trained to fight in different ways, according to specific tactics adapted to the terrain and the enemy at hand. In that simple disposition lay one of the secrets of Byzantine survival. While standards of proficiency obviously varied greatly, Byzantine soldiers went into battle with learned combat skills, which could be adapted by further training for particular circumstances. That made Byzantine soldiers, units, and armies much more versatile than their enemy counterparts, who only had the traditional fighting skills of their nation or tribe, learned from elders by imitation and difficult to change. In — Edward N. Luttwak

Our primitive ancestors learnt various behavioral characteristics like jealousy, possessiveness and aggression to ensure the survival of their wild love life in the harsh environment of Mother Nature. And all those behavioral responses eventually got engraved in our genetic blueprint. So, these are not the enemies in the path of a healthy relationship, rather when utilized properly they can even kindle the spark in a dying relationship. — Abhijit Naskar

Survival is the foundation of endurance; complete triumph is the endgame. — Bohdi Sanders

In flying, the probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival. — Neil Armstrong

Do you know the best way to get your body heat back?" Ethan asked her as he looked her in the eyes and stroked her glossy brown hair. "The way to warm up is to lie next to another person. Naked. — Amanda Bretz

Our group pressed west on what was left of Highway 93, toward the pass leading to Las Vegas. Sand covered the road in loose drifts so deep the horses' hooves sank into them. The metal highway signs were bent low by the strong wind, and above us, billboards that once screamed ads for the casinos were now stripped of their promises of penny slots and large jackpots. The raw boards underneath were exposed, like showgirls without their makeup. Some signs had been blown over completely and lay half-buried under mounds of sand, like sleeping animals.
Cars dotted the highway, their paint scoured off and dead tumbleweeds caught underneath them. Their windows were fogged with death, and despite my effort not to look, my eyes were drawn to the blurred images of the still forms inside. I tried to concentrate on the dark road ahead of us instead. — Kirby Howell

If the age of the Earth were a calendar year and today were a breath before midnight on New Year's Eve, we showed up a scant fifteen minutes ago, and all of recorded history has blinked by in the last sixty seconds. Luckily for us, our planet-mates
the fantastic meshwork of plants, animals, and microbes
have been patiently perfecting their wares since March, an incredible 3.8 billion years since the first bacteria ... After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival. — Janine Benyus

If we turn now to such vestiges of cult as are associated otherwise than with time and season, we discover a definite recognition of the survival of these nearly a century ago. Keightley, the old fairy mythologist, who did such yeoman service in the collection of much valuable elfin lore, says, as long ago as 1850, when referring to the confused nature of his subject: 'Indeed it could not well be otherwise, when we recollect that all these beings (the larger and greater fairies) once formed part of ancient and exploded systems of religion and that it is chiefly in the traditions of the peasantry that their memorial has been preserved. — Lewis Spence

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

Never have I experienced in a people and in myself so powerful a surge of life as at that period when our very existence and survival were at stake. — Stefan Zweig

An indigenous culture with sufficient territory, and bilingual and intercultural education, is in a better position to maintain and cultivate its mythology and shamanism. Conversely, the confiscation of their lands and imposition of foreign education, which turns their young people into amnesiacs, threatens the survival not only of these people, but of an entire way of knowing. It is as if one were burning down the oldest universities in the world and their libraries, one after another - thereby sacrificing the knowledge of the world's future generations. — Jeremy Narby

By helping us to be more productive, technology lets us to spend less time focusing on survival, and more on solving other challenges. — Bill Gates

It's been encouraging to hear the pope talking about climate change and take it away from being a political issue to being one of survival. — Joy Bryant

If you're poor and ignorant, with a child, you're a slave. Meaning that you're never going to get out of it. These women are in bondage to a kind of slavery that the 13th Amendment just didn't deal with. The old master provided food, clothing and health care to the slaves because he wanted them to get up and go to work in the morning. And so on welfare: you get food, clothing and shelter
you get survival, but you can't really do anything else. You can't control your life. — Joycelyn Elders

After eighty, there are no enemies, only survivors. — David Ben-Gurion

Well, biology today as I see it has an amiable look - quite different from the 19th-century view that the whole arrangement of nature is hostile, 'red in tooth and claw.' That came about because people misread Darwin's 'survival of the fittest.' — Lewis Thomas

GENES
G raft of yourself
E endowment
N ew generation
E volution
S urvival
Kamil Ali — Kamil Ali

The way black women say "girl" can be magical. Frankly, I have no solid beliefs about the survival of consciousness after physical death. But if it's going to happen I know what I want to see after my trek toward the light. I want to see a black woman who will smile and say, "Girl ... — Abigail Padgett

And it was only when we invented the spear and began roaming the planet that technologies got complex and central to human survival. — Kirkpatrick Sale

Whenever there is love beyond boundaries ...
Whenever trust flows deeper than oceans ...
Nevertheless, a Trial is born ...
You pass that trial, sacred you shall be ... if you don't, your are immortal !!!! — M.W.Latif

I began to wait. My thoughts swung wildly. I was either fixed on practical details of immediate survival or transfixed by pain, weeping silently, my mouth open and my hands on my head. — Yann Martel

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

We need to reevaluate and reconsider what is appropriate human behavior. Human beings have been so successful at surviving because of our intelligence and cooperation. When we are unintelligent and uncooperative it is no wonder that our survival is threatened. We need to be educated about our health and the health of our planet, and work together to achieve goals that are impossible to achieve individually. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Being rich had felt to Edgar like treading alone for all of time in a beautiful, bottomless pool. So much, so blue, and nothing to push off from. No grit or sand, no sturdy earth, just his own constant movement to keep above the surface. It was easy to hate riches when they surrounded him, but Edgar did not know how to be any other kind of person. He did not know that in every life the work of want and survival was just as floorless, just as unstopping. — Ramona Ausubel

All this is, is a nine hundred dollar hammer. — Joe Teti

As a physician, I see the earth as a patient in the intensive care unit. We have an acute clinical crisis on our hands and must take urgent action. My prescription for survival is that the American people rise up as they did in the 1980s, when 80 percent of Americans supported the nuclear weapons freeze. — Helen Caldicott

As man becomes more technologically advanced, his barbarity becomes even more lethal — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Every creature has a survival instinct. It looks like fear but it's not the same thing. Fear isn't the desire to avoid death or pain. Fear is rooted in the knowledge that what you recognize as yourself can cease to exist. Fear is existential. — John Scalzi

The end and goal of any society as it addresses the problem of education is to raise the ability, the initiative and the cultural level, and with all these the survival level of that society. — L. Ron Hubbard

The key word is flexibility, the ability to adapt constantly. Darwin said it clearly. People thought that he mainly talked about survival of the fittest. What he said was that the species that survive are usually not the smartest or the strongest, but the ones most responsive to change. So being attentive to customers and potential partners is my best advice
after, of course, perseverance and patience. — Philippe Kahn

I am passionately invested in the survival of Israel and everything Israel represents. But I am extremely critical of much of its policy. I believe that the occupation must end. And if it doesn't, it will end Israel. I'm not in favor of settlements. — Simon Schama

The power of an idea is never to be underestimated. Many a thought has survived long after its host has ceased to be. It is the power of an idea that no shield can defend against, nor sword divide, nor poison infect. As such, we must aspire to create ideas, rather than preserve life. In a sense, this is how we achieve true immortality and live on past our time. — A.J. Darkholme

We've been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. — Atul Gawande

I shared with Fleur the mysterious self-contempt of the survivor. There were times we hated who we were, and who we had to become, in order not to follow those we loved into the next world. We grew hard. We became impenetrable, sparing of our pity. Sorrows that leveled other people were small to us. We made no move to avoid pain. Sometimes we even welcomed it--we were clumsy with knives, fire, boiling water, steel traps. Pain took our minds off the greater pain that was the mistake that we still existed. — Louise Erdrich

Human activity is destroying the natural systems that we depend upon for our survival. Our most basic instinct as humans is to survive; yet we continue to destroy our life-support machine. Connected humans understand this terrible contradiction; disconnected humans are not able to.

Not all humans are responsible: just those who are part of Industrial Civilization. Industrial Civilization depends on economic growth and the unsustainable use of natural resources, so it has developed a complex set of tools for keeping people disconnected from the real world and living a life that keeps civilization running. Humans have been manipulated in order to be part of a destructive system.

The only way to prevent global ecological collapse and thus ensure the survival of humanity is to rid the world of Industrial Civilization. — Keith Farnish

Raising a daughter is an extremely political act in this culture. Mothers have been placed in a no-win situation with their daught ers: if they teach their daughters simply how to get along in a world that has been shaped by men and male desires, then they betray their daughters' potential But, if they do not, they leave their daughters adrift in a hostile world without survival strategies. — Elizabeth Debold

Knowledge without wisdom is adequate for the powerful, but wisdom is essential to the survival of the subordinate — Patricia Hill Collins

One goal of the mindful caregiver is to find ways to not feel 'dis-eased' in the caregiving process. — Nancy L. Kriseman

DID is about survival! As more people begin to appreciate this concept, individuals with DID will start to feel less as though they have to hide in shame. DID develops as a response to extreme trauma that occurs at an early age and usually over an extended period of time. — Deborah Bray Haddock

In any survival situation, you need to weigh the risk and the reward. — Joe Teti

Absolutely the United States should lead in space, for the survival of the United States. It's inspiring for the next generation. If we lose leadership, then we'll be using Chinese capability to inspire Americans. — Buzz Aldrin

Fear is good, for it makes us cautious and aids survival. Not so with terror. It is like slow poison, paralyzing the limbs and blurring the mind ... Never, when in danger, ask yourself, What will they do to me? Instead think, What can I do to prevent them? — David Gemmell

Civilization is the commercialization of survival. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Computers no longer interface with humans
they interact, and the interaction will become steadily deeper, more subtle, and more crucial to our collective sanity and ultimate survival. — Alan Cooper

The world is a jungle and each of us is alone. Each of us is the hunter and every one is the hunted. Kill or be killed. In this jungle, only the smartest will survive. Your brother is smart, you are not. You are a fool, filled with stupid notions of duty. Unless you cure yourself of this disease, you are doomed. — Anand Neelakantan

No matter what the practice or teaching, ego loves to wait in ambush to appropriate spirituality for its own survival and gain. — Chogyam Trungpa

We are humanity, the banner read. Wrong. We're pale reflections of it, weak shadows, distant echoes. — Rick Yancey

Work is a vehicle with which man chases some fleeting destination called a full tummy. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Let it be understood that we cannot go outside of this alternative: liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not liberty, equality, survival of the unfittest. The former carries society forward and favors all its best members; the latter carries society downwards and favors its worst members. — James O'Toole

There is no enemy that respect and love will not conquer. The moral authority for survival comes from respect. — Bryant McGill

If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so much in the survival of our own species as in the fulfillment of the ultimate irony of organic evolution: that in the instant of achieving self-understanding through the mind of man, life has doomed its most beautiful creations. — Edward O. Wilson

He fought for his very survival. If he fought dirty sometimes that does not diminish the fact that he refused to give up. — Nancy Milford

Choices, Choices, Choices!
Listen to your instincts; you will make the best-choices. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Listen up, Nic," she said firmly, looking straight into his gray-blue eyes. "If you die on me out here, so help me I'll hold seances and pester you. I won't give you a moment's peace in the hereafter," she threatened in a fierce whisper. Gabrielle O'Hara, River of Dreams — Sharon K. Garner

I am dedicating the majority of my wealth to improving education. It is the key to the survival of the human race. We have to plan for our collective future
and the first step begins with the social, emotional, and intellectual tools we provide to our children. As humans, our greatest tool for survival is our ability to think and to adapt - as educators, storytellers, and communicators our responsibility is to continue to do so. — George Lucas

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

We'd all mourn for a while, but at the end of the day we were a tough lot, and we'd survive. — Suzanne Johnson

To run with the wolf was to run in the shadows, the dark ray of life, survival and instinct. A fierceness that was both proud and lonely, a tearing, a howling, a hunger and thirst. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst. A strength that would die fighting, kicking, screaming, that wouldn't stop until the last breath had been wrung from its body. The will to take one's place in the world. To say 'I am here.' To say 'I am. — O.R. Melling

An island, on the other hand, is small. There are fewer species, and the competition for survival has never reached anything like the pitch that it does on the mainland. Species are only as tough as they need to be, life is much quieter and more settled [..] So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight - the locals wouldn't stand a chance. — Douglas Adams

Identifying a potential threat feels curiously good. You're like a gazelle that smells a lion and can't relax until it sees where the lion is. Seeing a lion feels good when the alternative is worse. We seek evidence of threats to feel safe, and we get a dopamine boost when we find what we seek. You can also get a serotonin boost from the feeling of being right, and an oxytocin boost from bonding with those who sense the same threat. This is why people seem oddly pleased to find evidence of doom and gloom. But the pleasure doesn't last because the "do something" feeling commands your attention again. You can end up feeling bad a lot even if you're successful in your survival efforts. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

If someone is aiming a blaster at your ally, do you raise your ligthsaber to prevent it, or do you do nothing because a Jedi isn't supposed to take aggressive action? I mean, where's the line, Jacen? We're in a war for survival , and defense sometimes means having to eliminate the opposition.
-Anakin Solo — James Luceno

We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before. — Barack Obama

Obviousl, my perception of the world is one where humans are a threat to our survival. — Kevin Bacon

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

Now I see how many wolf characteristics you had. You were wary, didn't really trust anyone or anything. You were elusive and secretive. You paced out behind the trees, watching everything and waiting for the moment when it was safe to come in and rest by the fire. But you weren't happy there -- no, I take that back, you were happy there, but you weren't comfortable. It wasn't what you knew. It wasn't what you trusted. You trusted meanness, not kindness. Kindness spooked you -- you were always looking for the trap in it. You trusted in a scrappy existence where you had to fight for your survival. — Helen Humphreys

My family and I participate in 'Cycle for Survival.' it was started by a friend of my wife's who lost his wife to a rare form of cancer. — Brian Krzanich

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

I believe that to meet the challenge of our times, human beings will have to develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. We must all learn to work not just for our own self, family, or nation but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace, the equitable use of natural resources, and through concern for future generations, the proper care of the environment. — Dalai Lama

I feel like the writers that I'm drawn to, the writers that I really cling to, are the writers who seem to be writing out of a desperate act. It's like their writing is part of a survival kit. Those are the writers that I just absolutely cherish and carry with me everywhere I go. — Sam Shepard

It is not what happens to you that matters; it is how you feel about it that does. — Shannon L. Alder

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage. — Seneca.

We're the start of an amazing, dumbfounding history of survival that will only get better as the centuries pass. — Ray Bradbury

The issues which today confront the nation are clearly defined and so fundamental as to directly involve the very survival of the Republic. Are we going to preserve the religious base to our origin, our growth and our progress, or yield to the devious assaults of atheistic or other anti-religious forces? Are we going to maintain our present course toward State Socialism with Communism just beyond or reverse the present trend and regain our hold upon our heritage of liberty and freedom? — Douglas MacArthur

Those who shoot in competition seem to have a remarkably high hit potential and survival ratio in actual gunfights. — Massad Ayoob

I realized that I was writing about folks with lots of skills, especially fix-it skills and survival skills, who were nonetheless not doing well in the new-millennium America. — Bonnie Jo Campbell

We become what we hear and see and do every day. We don't become what we don't hear and see and do every day. In neuroscience, this is known as "survival of the busiest. — Meg Jay

God's grace will cover us like a cloak-enough to provide for survival but too thin to keep out all the cold. — Neal A. Maxwell

That day I saw people trying to feed themselves but managing to do so only on a subsistence level. And people who are hungry are not worried about communism or Communists. — Nick Mills

The Government justifies keeping everyone else in poverty because people seem to work the hardest when they're right on the edge of survival. — Margaret Peterson Haddix

Taking a risk to survive isn't that impressive. Taking a risk to be happy, that takes guts. — Sarah Noffke

To eat one's fill, eat until the exhaustion of the appetite, was the principal pleasure that the peasants dangled before their imagination, and one that they rarely realized in their lives.
They [the peasants] also imagined other dreams coming true, including the standard run of castles and princesses. But their wishes usually remained fixed on common objects in the everyday world. One hero gets "a cow and some chickens"; another, an armoire full of linens. A third settles for light work, regular meals, and a pipe full of tobacco. And when gold rains into the fireplace of a fourth, he uses it to buy "food, clothes, a horse, land." In most of the tales, wish fulfillment turns into a program for survival, not a fantasy of escape. — Robert Darnton

If evolution was worth its salt, it should've evolved something better than 'survival of the fittest.' I think a better idea would be 'survival of the wittiest.' At least, that way, creatures that didn't survive could've died laughing. — Lily Tomlin

We desert those who desert us; we cannot afford to suffer; we must live how we can. — Elizabeth Bowen

My father so appropriately put it that we are certainly the only animal that makes conscious choices that are bad for our survival as a species. — Louise Leakey

We'll never survive!"
"Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has. — William Goldman

As a journalist, it is so easy to get hardened when you see so many stories that are disturbing. Sometimes it's just your survival mechanism that makes you hardened to some of it. — Linda Vester

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

It feels good to know you contributed positively to another's life, to their happiness, to their survival. It gives us a sense of purpose. — Joy Bryant

I don't know if cats understand what their owners say, but they do have a strong survival instinct. — Manel Loureiro

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

The crisis of our diminishing water resources is just as severe (if less obviously immediate) as any wartime crisis we have ever faced. Our survival is just as much at stake as it was at the time of Pearl Harbor, or the Argonne, or Gettysburg, or Saratoga. — Jim Wright

To love God more is never to love people less. It's to love people best. It's to relieve them of the responsibility of being your false Christ. It's to keep their sins against you from being unforgivable and your sins against them from being ignorable. It's to guard them from our mean-streaks and strong human tendencies to respond to disappointment with punishment. It's to keep the people close by from cutting their wrists on the razor-sharp blades of our insecurities. It's to dull the edge of our cravings to be adored. It's to untie the double knots of codependency. It's to let the affirmations of others be the overflow and not the essential source of our emotional survival. To love God is to guard man. — Beth Moore

One might accept death reasoningly, with every aspect of the conscious mind, but the body was a brute beast that knew nothing of reason. — Isaac Asimov

Your soul may be trampled in times of troubles. But if your spirit is strong, you will survive. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I don't even have a choice. Rachel thought how that was pretty much true of everything now, that you got one choice at the beginning but if you didn't choose right, and she hadn't, things got narrow real quick. Like trying to wade a river, she thought. You take a wrong step and set your foot on a wobbly rock or in a drop-off and you're swept away, and all you can do then is try to survive. (83) — Ron Rash

The source of man's rights is not divine law or a congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A _ and man is man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product for his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational — Ayn Rand

Sandals are made out of rubber, and when lit on fire burn black. — Joe Teti

You know this is a dicey situation anyway you look at it. — Joe Teti