Selected survival quotes

1. Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

2. Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.

3. That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.

4. Adaptation to one's environment makes for a sort of survival; but after all, the supreme victory is only won by those who prove themselves of so much hardier stuff than the rest that no power on earth is able to destroy them. The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

5. The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

6. Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the jungle that way.

7. Aren't I lucky, to have survived so much bad luck.

8. What I need is a lawyer who specializes in the law of the jungle.

9. Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.

10. To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated.

11. You may proclaim, good sirs, your fine philosophy But till you feed us, right and wrong can wait!

12. I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.

13. Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

14. When you fight, if it is a real fight, use every tool that you have, use your whole body. Use your fists, your legs, your fingers, your head if you have to, and hit them in every vulnerable spot, the balls, the eyes etc. to win.

15. All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct.

16. The Universe forces those who live in it to understand it. Those creatures who find everyday experience a muddled jumble of events with no predictability, no regularity, are in grave peril. The Universe belongs to those who, at least to some degree, have figured it out.

17. In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.

18. We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.

19. One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.

20. As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.

21. If I couldn't laugh, I'd rather die.

22. I live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported.

23. That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

24. Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

25. Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.

26. Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.

27. This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. Our most persistent and spectacular efforts are concerned not with the preservation of what we are but with the building up of an imaginary conception of ourselves in the opinion of others. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter.

28. When grubbing for necessities man is still an animal. He becomes uniquely human when he reaches out for the superfluous and extravagant.

29. Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.

30. The history of man is a graveyard of great cultures that came to catastrophic ends because of their incapacity for planned, rational, voluntary reaction to challenge.

31. Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.

32. He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.

33. Hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love.

34. Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible in himself, though both the indestructible element and the trust may remain permanently hidden from him. One of the ways in which this hiddenness can express itself is through faith in a personal god.

35. So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being.

36. Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

37. There is nothing that sharpens a man's senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day.

38. Time enough to think of the future when you haven't any future to think of.

39. War does not decide who is right but who is left.

40. A political society does not live to conduct foreign policy; it would be more correct to say that it conducts foreign policy in order to live.

41. So think about the poor slave who could read, but was scared to teach their kids to read for fear they would be killing their kids. Think about the poor slave that rode to town every week. Think about the poor slave who rode the buggy to town every week. Riding the buggy : riding the buggy, and he could read, and is riding the buggy and he's riding the buggy. And up ahead he sees a busy intersection, and is riding the buggy and he's riding the buggy. Then he sees a STOP sign : Now he's in a big dilemma. 'If I go through this intersection, I'm a have a accident. If I stop, these crackers will kill me.' And he's riding the buggy, and in the last minute he says 'fuck it', goes through the intersection, has a big ol' accident. Almost kills somebody. Then the police come: 'Nigger, what is wrong with you? Nigger, what the fuck is wrong with you? You could have killed somebody, nigger. Didn't see that stop sign?' 'Oh, I don't know what you talking about.' 'You didn't see that stop sign, that stop sign back there?' 'Oh, you mean that octagon thing.' 'Nigger, who taught you octagon?'

42. well well boss there is something to be said for the lyric and imperial attitude believe that everything is for you until you discover that you are for it sing your faith in what you get to eat right up to the minute you are eaten for you are going to be eaten

43. The ancient owls' nest must have burned. Hastily, all alone, a glistening armadillo left the scene, rose-flecked, head down, tail down

44. Take the case of courage. No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages. Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. 'He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,' is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.

45. Man cannot live without self-control

46. He lives among the far moons of Achernar, and he is accustomed to the most extreme outrages of terror and the hourly proximity of death. - Murgen

47. We were about to board the planes for the flight back to the United States. Jim Jones didn't want us to leave, at least not alive. A tractor trailer loaded with men armed with shotguns and rifles pulled up and opened fire on us at that airstrip. Congressman Ryan was gunned down, having been shot 40 times. The first and only congressman in the history of this country to be assassinated during the line of duty. I was shot five times and left to bleed on that airstrip for 22 hours. Back at Jonestown, over 900 people lost their lives in a mass murder and suicide that night. This is what I awoke to on that long day. I was 28 years old, and I was waiting to die. I laid awake all night fearing some of the gunmen would come back and finish us off. Time passed, and local Guyanese people offered me rum to try and get me through the night. I had a lot of time to think. I promised God that if I lived, I would make every day count. I promised that I would make something out of my life if I was allowed to keep my life. Well, here I am. I have chosen a career as a public servant. One, I hope many of you will contemplate as you move forward in your lives.

48. Jackie Speier -- moving on, moving up: Survivor of Jonestown ambush plans run for lieutenant governor, November 16, 2003, San Francisco Chronicle

49. If I was in Hollywood and I got bitten by a zombie, I would want to stay a zombie and then take down as many people as I could,

50. NOTES: Jean Cololere, a drummer in the colonial troops at Quebec, was imprisoned for duelling in 1751. In the cell next to his was Francoise Laurent, who had been sentenced to hang for stealing. Except for letters of pardon, the only way at the time for someone under sentence of death to escape hanging was, for a man, to become a hangman, or, for a woman, to marry one. Francoise persuaded Cololere to apply for the vacant (and undesirable) post of executioner, and also to marry her. -Condensed from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume III, 1741-1770

51. I was thinking too damn much to be careful. When I stabbed my key in the lock and turned it there was a momentary catch in the tumblers before it went all the way around and I swore out loud as I rammed the door with my shoulder and hit the floor.Something swished through the air over my head and I caught an arm and pulled a squirming, fighting bundle of muscle down on top of me. If I could have reached my rod I would have blown his guts out. His breath was in my face and I brought my knee up, but he jerked out of the way bringing his hand down again and my shoulder went numb after a split second of blinding pain. He tried again with one hand going for my throat, but I got one foot loose and kicked out and up and felt my toe smash onto his groin. The cramp of the pain doubled him over on top of me, his breath sucking in like a leaky tire. Then I got cocky. I thought I had him. I went to get up and he moved. Just once.That thing in his hand smashed against the side of my head and I started to crumple up piece by piece until there wasn't anything left except the sense to see and hear enough to know that he had crawled out of the room and was falling down the stairs outside. Then I thought about the lock on my door and how I had a guy fix it so that I could tell if it had been jimmied open so I wouldn't step into any blind alleys without a gun in my hand, but because of a dame who lay naked and smiling on a bed I wouldn't share, I had forgotten all about it.

52. He stood with his back angled to the wall. To an indifferent observer he was simply in idle conversation, but it wasn't like that at all. This was an instinctive gesture of survival, being in constant readiness for an attack. His head didn't turn and his eyes didn't seem to move, but I knew he saw us. I could feel the hackles on the back of my neck stiffening and I knew he felt the same way. Dog was meeting dog. Nobody knew it but the dogs and they weren't telling. He was bigger than I thought. The suggestion of power I had seen in his photographs was for real. When he moved it was with the ponderous grace of some jungle animal, dangerously deceptive, because he could move a lot faster if he had to. When we were ten feet away he pretended to see us for the first time and a wave of charm washed the cautious expression from his face and he stepped out to greet Dulcie with outstretched hand. But it wasn't her he was seeing. It was me he was watching. I was one of his own kind. I couldn't be faked out and wasn't leashed by the proprieties of society. I could lash out and kill as fast as he could and of all the people in the room, I was the potential threat. I knew what he felt because I felt the same way myself.

53. The temperature was six below zero and it kept me dying on the spot because the blood coagulated and clotted in ugly smears of cloth and skin and the pain hadn't started yet, so when the little fat guy who saw my eyes open and still bright pulled me away from the carnage he was almost in the shock I was going into. Nobody would listen to him. He was a drunk. I was nearly dead. Sometimes the body responds to a stimulus that can't be explained. He got me upright. I walked woodenly, dyingly. I was sat in an old car. The fat man rolled down the windows. The blood stayed frozen. My hands were numb and I couldn't feel my feet. Idly, I wondered what frostbite was like. Breathing was a thing that was happening, but at a pace that said it could slow, then stop at any time. A dull, squeezing sensation of pain was beginning to gnaw on my insides and I knew that eventually, and very soon, it would grow into a terrible, devastating animal with an awful hunger and I would be eaten alive by it. I wanted to scream but nothing would come out.

54. take one last look behind commit this to memory and mind don't miss this wasteland, this terrible place when you leave keep your heart off your sleeve

55. How can anyone have a true sense of the Hebrew race without crossing this terrifying desert, without experiencing it? For three interminable days we crossed it on our camels. Your throat sizzles from thirst, your head reels, your mind spins about as serpent-like you follow the sleek tortuous ravine. When a race is forged for two score years in this kiln, how can such a race die? I rejoiced at seeing the terrible stones where the Hebrews' virtues were born: their perseverance, will power, obstinacy, endurance, and above all, a God flesh of their flesh, flame of their flame, to whom they cried, 'Feed us! Kill our enemies! Lead us to the Promised Land!' To this desert the Jews owe their continued survival and the fact that by means of their virtues and vices they dominate the world. Today, in the unstable period of wrath, vengeance, and violence through which we are passing, the Jews are of necessity once again the chosen people of the terrible God of Exodus from the land of bondage.

56. At that point, if I had consciously realized what I was already planning to do, if I had admitted my rage, my feelings of betrayal, then my conditioning would have kicked in and I would have either suppressed those feelings or gone mad

57. How is it possible that stupidity should end our lives when our enemies' cleverest stratagems had not

58. First we try to preserve ourselves, until we see that we can't. Then we try to preserve our children, until we see we can't. Then we act to preserve our kin, and then our village or tribe, and when we see we can't preserve even them, then we act in order to preserve our memory. And if we can't do that, what is left? We finally have the perspective of trying to act for the good of humanity as a whole Or despairing

59. The river was pure treachery, so smooth on top, the water so cool on a hot day, and yet there was death in it, murder in it's heart. Like the Egyptians. Such a darling child, they would say, and pat her head. And Miriam would answer in her heart : you made my father a slave. You want us all dead. You are the river, you and all of Egypt. You are the river and as long as we stay beside you we are in danger of drowning

60. We'll die heroically I'd rather live

61. If we can stand up When all else falls down We'll last through the winter We'll last through the storms We'll last through the north winds That bring down the ice and snow We'll last through the long nights Till the green field's growing again Growing again

62. Singers: We've got nothing always had nothing nothing but holes and millions of them Kokol: Living in holes Polpoch: Dying in holes Cucurucu: Holes in our bellies Rossignol: and holes in our clothes

63. Forsaken, fucking in the cold, eating each other, lost runny noses, complaining all the time like so many people that we know

64. After three days we reached land, and for twenty-eight days journeyed through uninhabited country, and the food ran out and hunger overtook them; and one day the steersman began saying: 'Why is it, Christian? You say your God is great and all-powerful; then why can you not pray for us? For we may perish of hunger; it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see another human being.' In fact, I said to them, confidently: 'Be converted by faith with all your heart to my Lord God, because nothing is impossible for him, so that today he will send food for you on your road, until you be sated, because everywhere he abounds.' And with God's help this came to pass; and behold, a herd of swine appeared on the road before our eyes, and they slew many of them, and remained there for two nights, and the were full of their meat and well restored, for many of them had fainted and would otherwise have been left half dead by the wayside. And after this they gave the utmost thanks to God, and I was esteemed in their eyes, and from that day they had food abundantly.

65. I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black/My stomach hurts, so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch

66. I tell you it's a cold world, stay in school/You tell me its a man's world, play the rules

67. Menacin' Methodz/Label Me a Lethal Weapon/Witnessing Breathless Imperfectionz

68. We all die in the end, so revenge we swore/I was all about my ends, fuck friends and foes

69. There was no mercy on the streets, I couldn't rest/I'm barely standin, bout to go to pieces, screamin peace

70. No memories, just a misery/Paintin a picture of my enemies killin me, in my sleep

71. Will I survive til the mo'nin, to see the sun/Please Lord forgive me for my sins, cause here I come

72. a young nigga with heart/ain't had shit to loose/pullin' my pistol on them fools/you know the rules

73. I hear the doctor standing over me screamin I can make it/Got a body full of bullet holes layin here naked

74. Still I, can't breathe, somethings evil in my IV/Cause everytime I breathe, I think they killin me

75. Pardon my thug poetry, but suckers is born everyday/and fear of man grow on trees

76. we thug niggaz and we came in packs/Every one of niggaz strapped sippin on 'yaq (Cognac)/In the back, my AR-15/Thuggin till I die, these streets got me cravin thorazine

77. I once contemplated suicide, and woulda tried/But when I held that 9, all I could see was my momma's eyes

78. All we know is violence, do tha job in silence/Walk tha city streets like a rat pack of tyrants

79. Grab your glocks when you see 2Pac / Call the cops when you see 2Pac, Uhh / Who shot me, but your punks didn't finish / Now, you 'bout to feel the wrath of a menace

80. Now its all about versace/You copied my style/Five shots couldn't drop me/I took it and smiled

81. Watching for thievin I'm cautious it's like I'm barely breathin/Puttin a bullet in mutherfuckers give me a reason

82. See me and hope I'm intoxicated or slightly faded/You tried to play me now homicide is my only payment

83. First we couldn't afford shit now everything's free/so we loot, please don't shoot when you see

84. While the rich kids is drivin Benz/I'm still tryin to hold on to my survivin friends

85. Well I can see close into achieve/In times of danger don't freeze time to be a g/Follow my lead I supply everything you need/An ounce of game and the trainin to make a g

86. Maybe, even your babies can produce and rise/Picture a life where black babies can survive past five

87. Lace me with words of destruction and I'll explode/but supply me with the will to survive, and watch the world grow

88. Now I was raised as a young black male/In order to get paid, forced to make crack sales

89. Keys to ignition, use at your discretion/Roll with a twelve gauge pump for protection/Niggaz hate me in the section from years of chin checkin, Turn to Smith and Wesson war weapons

90. I make my money and vacate, evade prison/Went from the chosen one to outcast, unforgiven

91. I fall on my knees and beg for mercy, not knowin if I'm worthy/Livin life thinkin no man can hurt me

92. The coppers wanna see me burried... I ain't worried/I got a line on the D.A. cuz I'm f**king his secretary

93. Look alive. Here comes a buzzard. ~ Miz Beaver

94. Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed. A school of fish appeared around the net or a knot cried out to be reknotted. Or I thought of my family of how they were spared this terrible agony. The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving. p. 209

95. I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. p. 161

96. I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time. p. 192

97. 'It was Richard Parker who calmed me down. It is the irony of this story that the one who scared me witless to start with was the very same who brought me peace, purpose, I dare say even wholeness.' pg. 204

98. 'Then Richard Parker, companion of my torment, awful, fierce thing that kept me alive, moved forward and disappeared forever from my life.' pg. 359

99. You survived not to live on your time is short, you have to give a proof of truth

100. To the strongest!