Quotes About Survival

Necessary illusions enable us to live.

IN THE EIGHTH DECADE of the twentieth century, a man named Elmer Pendell published a small book entitled WHY CIVILIZATIONS SELF-DESTRUCT (1977).

survival-oriented intelligence was too stupid to recognize and foresee its existence ahead of time.

all things are considered, the survival of our species probably owes a great deal to the Way of empathic compassion whose innate categories are somewhere incorporated into its innate procreating consciousness.

Furthermore, whether instinct, response, or impulse, none of them can be random or just flopping about. Otherwise, life forms that have them would quickly be reduced to a pulsating mess. Thus, some kind of "organizing intelligence" is implicit, and which, by all available clues, is energetic.

Time is shortening. But every day that I challenge this cancer and survive is a victory for me.

I knew of no instruction manual for reaching a higher level of humanity and a greater wisdom. But I felt intuitively that laughter was the beginning of wisdom, as is was indispensable for survival.

The jungle is like a different planet — a world of shadows, bugs, jaguars, anacondas. But none of these animals did us as much harm as the humans.

Women in London must have learned not to breathe

Who needs a suitcase? The notebooks are burnt.

Knives poised close to the throat—then the voices are slowly imbibed. Glutted majesty heaves himself back from the vampiric supper, While the Judas trees thrive in the hush of their forested bed.

As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.

When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day — but by the minute.

And maps can really point to places Where life is evil now: Nanking; Dachau. —WILLIAM C. KIRBY, Professor of Modern Chinese History and Chairman of the Department of History

Castles Burning: A Child's Life in War, Magda Denes

My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin, Peter Gay Nazi Berlin

The destruction of our technological society in a fit of nuclear peevishness would become disastrous even if there were many millions of immediate survivors. The environment toward which they were fitted would be gone, and Darwin's demon would wipe them out remorselessly and without a backward glance.

[John] Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.

The events in this story take place during the devastating Ukrainian famine of 1921–23, when more than a million people died of starvation and disease.

I am Dead, but it's not so bad. I've learned to live with it.

To act out of desperation is to act out of instinct. To let oneself get to that point however, is to ignore self-preservation.