Quotes About Survival

What but faith in the goodness and uniqueness of its essential principles could unite and sustain a country as diverse as America? What but faith could have enabled the country to survive the trials of the Revolution, the chaos and grief of a civil war—

When certain individuals feel severely threatened—emotionally, financially, physically—the lights on the horizon they use to orient themselves in the world might easily wink out. Life can then become a series of fear-driven decisions and compulsive acts of self-protection. People start to separate what is deeply troubling in their lives from what they see as good.

Once a person was asked to step into this brutal century, anything could happen

When they torpedo the troopship," he shouted, " you can't stand around admiring the view. Jump!

Whatever gets you through the night

Whatever gets you through your life 'salright, 'salright

Whatever gets you through your life, it's alright. It's alright.

raped her while he was living with them.

Lightness of being," then, is the ability, if not to find the good in bad things, then at least to remain afloat among them, perhaps to swim or to sail through them, possibly even to take precautions that can keep you dry.

Estimates of casualties, civilian and military, are notoriously inexact, but it is likely that some 27 million Soviet citizens died as a direct result of the war—roughly 90 times the number of Americans who died. Victory could hardly have been purchased at greater cost: the U.S.S.R. in 1945 was a shattered state, fortunate to have survived. The war, a contemporary observer recalled, was "both the most fearful and the proudest memory of the Russian people."2

The one who is not dead still has a chance.

Cockroaches appeared 120 million years before the dinosaurs.

Only the fakes survive.

The disease has survived in memory more than in any literature. Nearly all those who were adults during the pandemic have died now. Now the memory lives in the minds of those who only heard stories, who heard how their mother lost her father, how an uncle became an orphan, or heard an aunt say, "It was the only time I ever saw my father cry." Memory dies with people. The writers of the 1920s had little to say about it.

The elderly, normally the group most susceptible to influenza, not only survived attacks of the disease but were attacked far less often. This resistance of the elderly was a worldwide phenomenon. The most likely explanation is that an earlier pandemic , so mild as to not attract attention, resembled the 1918 virus closely enough that it provided protection. (p. 408 paperback edition)

Monument and Ignacio, Colorado, went further than banning all public gatherings. They banned customers from stores; the stores remained open, but customers shouted orders through doors, then waited outside for packages.

What could help, more than doctors, were nurses. Nursing could ease the strains on a patient, keep a patient hydrated, resting, calm, provide the best nutrition, cool the intense fevers. Nursing could give a victim of the disease the best possible chance to survive. Nursing could save lives.

Katherine Anne Porter was a reporter then, on the Rocky Mountain News. Her fiancé, a young officer, died. He caught the disease nursing her, and she, too, was expected to die. Her colleagues set her obituary in type. She lived. In "Pale Horse, Pale Rider

It now seemed as if there had never been life before the epidemic. The disease informed every action of every person in the city.

Natural selection is intolerant of idle verbosity.

In a world where so much of our natural heritage is being lost, why not celebrate the few bright spots where it is surviving and adapting?

When the last tree is cut and the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, then you will see that you can't eat money.

Only a Scotsman can really survive a Scottish education.

My parents believe in the principle of 'sink or swim,' or 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger ? or it kills you." From "The Education of Robert Nifkin