597 Survival Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

In this complex world, science, the scientific method, and the consequences of the scientific method are central to everything the human race is doing and to wherever we are going. If we blow ourselves up we will do it by misapplication of science; if we manage to keep from blowing ourselves up, it will be through intelligent application of science.

Patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual.

I now define 'moral behavior' as 'behavior that tends toward survival.' I won't argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word 'moral' to mean something else, but I do not think anyone can define 'behavior that tends toward extinction' as being 'moral' without stretching the word 'moral' all out of shape.

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. An animal so poor in spirit that he won't even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.

Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.

Behaving on a still higher moral level were the astronauts who went to the Moon, for their actions tend toward the survival of the entire race of mankind.

Men are expendable; women and children are not. A tribe or a nation can lose a high percentage of its men and still pick up the pieces and go on: as long as the women and children are saved. But if you fail to save the women and children, you've had it, you're done, you're through! You join Tyrannosaurus Rex, one more breed that bilged its final test.

I live on hope and that I think do all Who come into this world.

People are inexterminable - like flies and bed-bugs. There will always be some that survive in cracks and crevices - that's us.

If survival calls for the bearing of arms, bear them you must. But the most important part of the challenge is for you to find another means that does not come with the killing of your fellow man.

Five and twenty ponies Trotting through the dark- Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk. Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie - Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by!

This day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and 'Lord have mercy upon us' writ there; which was a sad sight to me, being the first of the kind that, to my remembrance, I ever saw. It put me into an ill conception of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell to and chaw, which took away the apprehension.

Try to stay a man amongst men ... There's no other hope for you.

This is how we go on: one day a time, one meal at a time, one pain at a time, one breath at a time. Dentists go on one root canal at a time; boat builders go on one hull at a time. If you write books, you go on one page at a time. We turn from all we know and all we fear. We study catalogues, watch football games, choose Sprint over AT&T. We count the birds in the sky and will not turn from the window when we hear the footsteps behind as something comes up the hall; we say yes, I agree that clouds often look like other things - fish and unicorns and men on horseback - but they are really only clouds. Even when the lightning flashes inside them we say they are only clouds and turn our attention to the next meal, the next pain, the next breath, the next page. This is how we go on.

Hearts can break. Yes. Hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don't.

Daylight came creeping through a white, muted world of fog. Garraty was walking by himself again. He no longer even knew how many had bought it in the night. Five maybe. His feet had headaches. Terrible migraines. He could feel them swelling each time he put his weight on them. His buttocks hurt. His spine was icy fire. But his feet had headaches and the blood was coagulating in them and swelling them and turning the veins to al dente spaghetti.

'You sound like Henry, man.' Eddie had begun to cry himself. He didn't want to. He hated to cry. 'He had a tower, too, only it wasn't dark. Remember me telling you about Henry's tower? We were brothers, and I guess we were gunslingers. We had this White Tower, and he asked me to go after it with him the only way he could ask, so I saddled up, because he was my brother, you dig it? We got there, too. Found the White Tower. But it was poison. It killed him. It would have killed me. You saw me. You saved more than my life. You saved my fuckin soul.'

'Who's gonna come through some magic door and save you, man? Do you know? I do. No one. You drew all you could draw. Only thing you can draw from now on is a fucking gun, because that's all you got left. Just like Balazar.'

He had a wife who was still sort of his responsibility, and when it came to his son there was no sort-of at all. Even thinking of Johnny was dangerous. Every time his mind turned to the boy, Clay felt a panic-rat inside his mind, ready to burst free of the flimsy cage that held it and start gnawing anything it could get at with its sharp little teeth. If he could make sure Johnny and Sharon were okay, he could keep the rat in its cage and plan what to do next. But if he did something stupid, he wouldn't be able to help anyone. In fact, he would make things worse for the people here.

The phone crazies own the days; when the stars come out, that's us. We're like vampires. We've been banished to the night. Up close we know each other because we can still talk; at a little distance we can be pretty sure of each other by the packs we wear and the guns more and more of us carry; but at a distance, the one sure sign is the waving flashlight beam. Three days ago we not only ruled the earth, we had survivor's guilt about all the other species we'd wiped out in our climb to the nirvana of round-the-clock cable news and microwave popcorn. Now we're the Flashlight People.

I wish I was more cheerful, it is more pleasant, Also it is a duty, we should smile as well as submitting To the purpose of One Above who is experimenting With various mixtures of human character which goes best, All is interesting for him it is exciting, but not for us. There I go again. Smile, smile, and get some work to do Then you will be practically unconscious without positively having to go.

Ideals survive through change. They die through inertia in the face of challenge.

Before comfort had been squeezed out of the hard land, like blood out of stone.

Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness.

Cold comfort to fill their hungry bellies.

Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine, and war; of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.

Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. . . . Humanity is in 'final exam' as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe

'Are you not thirsty?' said the Lion. 'I am dying of thirst,' said Jill. 'Then drink,' said the Lion. 'May I - could I - would you mind going away while I do?' said Jill. The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic. 'Will you promise not to - do anything to me, if I do come?' said Jill. 'I make no promise,' said the Lion. Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer. 'Do you eat girls?' she said. 'I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,' said the Lion. It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it. 'I daren't come and drink,' said Jill. 'Then you will die of thirst,' said the Lion. 'Oh dear!' said Jill, coming another step nearer. 'I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.' 'There is no other stream,' said the Lion.

When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!

You've Got To Pick A Pocket Or Two

Finally this evening, a brief note about change. Some of you have noticed in the last several days that I was not covering the pope. While my colleagues at ABC did a superb job, I did think a few times I was missing out. However, as some of you now know, I have learned in the last couple of days that I have lung cancer. Yes, I was a smoker until about 20 years ago, and I was weak and I smoked over 9/11. But whatever the reason, the news does slow you down a bit. I have been reminding my colleagues today who have been incredibly supportive that almost 10,000,000 Americans have been living with cancer, and I have a lot to learn from them. And living is the key word. The National Cancer Institute says that we are survivors from the moment of diagnosis. I will continue to do the broadcast; on good days my voice will not always be like this. Certainly it's been a long time, and I hope it goes without saying that a journalist who doesn't value deeply the audience's loyalty should be in another line of work. To be perfectly honest I'm a little surprised at the kindness today from so many people, that's not intended as false modesty, but even I was taken aback by how far and how fast news travels. Finally, I wonder if other men and women ask their doctors right away, 'O.K., Doc, when does the hair go?' ' At any rate, that's it for now on World News Tonight. Have a good evening. I'm Peter Jennings. 'Thanks, and good night.

... a lion wants to eat an antelope's body, but the antelope has very different plans for its body. This is not normally regarded as competition for a resource, but logically it is hard to see why not.

... you need more than luck to navigate successfully through a thousand sieves in succession.

... the true utility function of life, that which is being maximised in the natural world, is DNA survival. But DNA is not floating free; it is locked up in living bodies and it has made the most of the levers of power at its disposal.

And there were two types of Human bipedy type things! There was Neanderthals, and Homo Sapiens. We were like cousins, like kissing cousins, except we didn't kiss. Neanderthals, of course, heavy eyebrow-ridge, were kind of: 'Uh... uohh... ohha' You know, with that look of 'I've got a headache...'. Very hardy, but not so bright upstairs. Whereas Homo Sapiens were slightly more: 'How're you getting on, Neanderthal? Everything... all going alright?' Neanderthal: 'Erm, not too good... yesterday... we went hunting... and... half our tribe... was killed... when they fell on themselves... and I... I've hurt my knee... and we've got no... butter.' Homo Sapien: 'Yes, well always good talking to you! Must go, got some swatches of moss for the new cave we're moving into. A local chap's doing some paintings of things, jumping things... Gazelles... or whatever. It's pretty good, should fetch a pretty penny in a couple of years. Where are you living these days?' Neanderthal: 'I am living in a pit of my own excrement.' Homo Sapien: 'Ah, good idea, keeps you warm, yeah?' Neanderthal: 'Uh, what?' Homo Sapien: 'Well your poo keeps you warm, is that right?' Neanderthal 'Uh thi th h...?' Homo Sapien: 'Your poo, from your body... body heat... is that the idea...?' Neanderthal: 'Um no, sort of that... the estate agent said bathroom en-suite.'