Quotes About Self-preservation

Our anxiety systems are very practical. They assume that anything you run away from is dangerous.

What do you do to avoid conflict, necessary though it may be? What are you inclined to lie about, assuming that the truth might be intolerable? What do you fake?

An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life.

Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing.

We're not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.

Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.

Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.

My instinct was to keep him at a distance, at that distance, certainly, that we introduce between ourselves and those we suspect of neediness.

I'm not going to get myself hurt." I'm too important to let that happen. ~Jaypaw

They should hold themselves absolutely upon the immovable foundation of truth and nature, whereby alone they can save themselves from misapprehensions and from the danger of being entirely carried away from reality into mere dreams and fictions.

If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.

Kick him in the balls before he kicks you in yours

The idea of preventive medicine is faintly un-American," the Chicago Tribune noted in 1975. "It means, first, recognizing that the enemy is us.

While we do not ask for accolades, we must defend ourselves from repeated public attacks.

If a hamster has too many babies she knows she cannot carry, she not only abandons them, but she eats them. That means she doesn't have to go out and hunt for food for herself.

When something bad is written about me, I find it hurtful. So I choose not to look at it.

I'd always maintained an image so that people wouldn't approach me.

When Men fly from danger, it is natural for them to run farther than they need.

If an older man ever sweeps you off your feet, just get up and run away as fast as you can." I

The kidneys also provide a perfect illustration of an age-old anatomical truth: the body is designed to protect itself, not to be easy to dissect.

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong - these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

Although Salinger had long since cut me out of his life completely and made it plain that he had nothing but contempt for me, the thought of becoming the object of his wrath was more than I felt ready to take on.

Man clings to himself and what is his, over and beyond death itself, and he is afraid to let life out of his hands—life, this most real of all things, this most pitiful of all pitiful things, the most eternal of all that is eternal.

Be selfish, stupid and have good health. But if stupidity is lacking, then all is lost. Flaubert's dictum for getting through life unscathed.