Quotes About Self-preservation

Blaming the wolf would not help the sheep much. The sheep must learn not to fall into the clutches of the wolf.

This is what my lifelong search for room to maneuver had come to: a box of water in a lightless, windowless nine-by-sixteen-foot room—afraid to leave my artificial womb, to go outside where I could only cause trouble, disappoint my family and myself. Best, I thought, to stay right here where I couldn't fuck anything up. And stay I would, day after day, sometimes three or four times on weekends, for hours at a time, just trying to keep my head below water. Connecticut—Christmas

When a little voice inside of you tells you to duck, you should duck first, and then worry about where the voice is coming from.

Everybody's always doing the same old things--- you know, doing unto others before they can do unto you.

Now it was time for others to take up the battle because he had given up trying to save or change the world. He simply wanted to survive it.

He who retreats lives longer.

Why is it okay to put someone to death, but it's not okay for those people to do it themselves?

He defended himself by ridiculing others.

I'm numb from all this scraping, but for once I'm glad I've got this big rump to protect myself from the ground. This would hurt a lot more if I were one of those bony, rail-thin, smoked-for-a-hundred-years old crones. But then, if I was one of them, I could probably stand up.

A wise man never loses anything if he have himself.

To cope with hurt and control my fears, I grew a thick skin. Oh, the many names of power - pride, arrogance, control. I am not the frozen snow queen but a flesh and blood woman with perhaps too loving a heart, one easily hurt.

Many who would not take the last cookie would take the last lifeboat.

I learned that if someone tells you to be on the safe side lots of times then after a while they do not need to say it. After a while you just say it to yourself in your head like, 'I had better not do that, just to be on the safe side.

I'm allergic to rocks hitting me in the face.

If I'm at a party where I'm not enjoying myself, I will put some cookies in my jacket pocket and leave without saying good-bye.

I am the kind of person who, if my feelings are unrequited, can completely detach from someone emotionally if I simply put my mind to it.

I'm the kind of person who becomes silent when I get scared, because I hope Death will not notice me if I am very still and very quiet. It has worked well so far.

Age is getting to know all the ways the world turns, so that if you cannot turn the world the way you want, you can at least get out of the way so you won't get run over.

E' un meccanismo difensivo, sai. Tu sei sicuro che uno che non ti ha mai visto ti considererebbe un pezzo di merda, e quindi cerchi di anticiparlo. Rilassati ragazzino. Quando ti conosceranno meglio capiranno che avevano ragione: sei proprio un pezzo di merda.

People are only mean when they're threatened… and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.

I love boxing and it did a lot for me. But sometimes it made me think how savage human beings could be to each other. That wasn't the kind of boxer I wanted to be. My strategy was to be as scientific as I could when I fought. I didn't want to be seriously hurt, and I didn't want to do that to anybody else either.

We may test the hypothesis that the State is largely interested in protecting itself rather than its subjects by asking: which category of crimes does the State pursue and punish most intensely — those against private citizens or those against itself?

How can you expect a statue to offer you food, if it cannot even save itself from the rain and cold?

The wiser we become, the more we do our best to keep a great distance between ourselves and love.