Quotes About Survival

Michael Ruse's The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979

The "four 'F's'" of animal behavior—fleeing, fighting, feeding, and…reproducing—all depend on acquiring information and

I might die from a bear attack; I could also succumb to a rattlesnake or a puma, slip down a rocky ravine, have a tree branch fall on my head, choke on beef jerky, or any other of a million unanticipated disasters. That's the thrill of backcountry exploration. My vulnerability is exquisite. If I don't watch out for me, no one else will.

There is one overmastering problem that the socially and politically disinherited always face: Under what terms is survival possible?

Even as Thurman recognizes that Christianity has been used throughout history as "an instrument of oppression," he makes clear "that Christianity as it was born in the mind of [Jesus] appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed.

The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish teacher and thinker appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus.

In life it isn't what you've lost, it's what you've got left that counts

The summer sun continued to rise in the sky and propel shocks of heat down on the city and the heavy moisture moistened bodies and clothing, and people fanned and wiped at sweating faces trying to survive another bitch of a day as Harry and Marion peacefully passed the day sleeping in each others arms oblivious to the reality surrounding them.

NOW THE SHIT REALLY hit the fan. It must have hit something because it sure as hell wasnt floating around the city. There no longer was any thought, or even desire, to make money, but just an unending effort to get enough for themselves. Some days it was a case of just copping enough for right now and then going out again to take care of the rest of the day and have that wake up shot nice and secure. And the streets were getting tougher.

Harry and Tyrone were holding out a little more on each other each day. If one guy somehow got caught short and his nose and eyes were running and his body shivering as they scuffled and hustled the street trying to cop, and asked the other one to give him a taste, the guy swore up and down he had nothing, that he had just done in his cottons, and he would start shaking, trying to fake his friend out.

I started to die 36 hours before I was born, so dying was a way of life for me.

It seemed as though most of the cats that we'd come up with just hadn't made it," he says. "Almost everybody was dead or in jail." Many young Black men in our generation can say the same thing. Drugs, oppression, and despair take their toll. Survival is not a simple matter or something to be taken for granted.

In London similar scenes played out as names were posted at Oceanic House, White Star's London office, near Trafalgar Square. Southampton was the hardest-hit city of all since that was where most of the crew and victualing staff lived—of whom only 212 out of 885 had survived.

People will survive, and they will find happiness. Happiness only comes when you're not looking for it.

Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference. So unless we're going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

Competitiveness always rests on the assumption of a life-and-death struggle.

Pakistan could continue to survive as it has done so far and defy further negative predictions. But if it does not grow economically sufficiently, integrate globally and remains mired in ideological debates and crises, how would its next seven decades be any different from the past seventy years?

250,000 men and women who worked in the mills are history. Some died, some became disillusioned, others simply lost their minds. Many committed suicide, some just melted into the background, some retreated to their native villages – while others ended up hawking vegetables beneath the very structures that gave them their bread and butter.

The past is comforting, Natalie. It's comforting because we survived it.

Experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.

Citizenship of a democratic state means living by the laws of the country. A liberal democracy cannot survive when part of the population believes that divine laws trump those made by man.

We've forgotten that we were once prey, not predator -- forgotten the intense terror, the claustrophobic horror .../ ... The ALIENATION ...

I think it's the same with all the relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists between the two people. When all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn't care if the other is alive or dead, then it's just no good. -- from Quantum of Solace