Quotes About Survival

The Vulture. Of all the creatures in the jungle, he has it the easiest. The hard work of others becomes his work; their failure to survive becomes his nourishment. Keep an eye on the Vulture - while you are hard at work, he is circling above. Do not fight him, join him.

The world is ruled by necessity: People change their behavior only if they have to. They will feel urgency only if their lives depend on it.

Leave martyrdom alone: The pendulum will swing back your way eventually, and you should stay alive to see it.

The human that depended on focused attention for its survival now becomes the distracted scanning animal, unable to think in depth, yet unable to depend on instincts.

like a turtle, the Spartans sacrificed mobility for safety. They managed to preserve stability for three hundred years, but at what cost? They had no culture beyond warfare, ... While their neighbors took to the sea, learning to adapt to a world of constant motion, the Spartans entombed themselves in their own system.... Only stasis allowed them to survive. But nothing in the world can remain stable forever, and the shell or system you evolve for your protection will someday prove your undoing.

Animals feel fear for a brief time, then it is gone. We dwell on our fears, intensifying them and making them last well past the moment of danger, even to the point of feeling constant anxiety.

Remember: there are always people out there who are more aggressive, more devious, more ruthless than you are, and it is inevitable that some of them will cross your path.

Our ancestors' survival depended on the intensity of their attention. The longer and harder they looked, the more they could distinguish between an opportunity and a danger.

Mack había sido capturado una vez y forzado a pasar tres años en Francia, donde había estudiado el estilo bélico de Napoleón.

Acceptance. That, he had learned in Russia many years ago, was the secret of survival. ... Accept it. Wait. Let the system exhaust itself. Protest will only raise your blood pressure.

The only thing you can be sure of, Herr March, is that - whoever wins - still standing when the smoke of battle clears will be the banks of the cantons of Switzerland.

the struggle [for existence] almost invariably will be most severe between the individuals of the same species, for they frequent the same districts, require the same food, and are exposed to the same dangers. CHARLES DARWIN, On the Origin of Species (1859)

We are an ark.......surrounded by a rising flood of discord

The trees themselves, as in winters past, will survive their burdening, broken thrive.

Unable to sleep, or pray, I stand by the window looking out at moonstruck trees a December storm has bowed with ice. Maple and mountain ash bend under its glassy weight, their cracked branches falling upon the frozen snow. The trees themselves, as in winters past, will survive their burdening, broken thrive. And am I less to You, my God, than they?

It was as though you struggled against fierce current jagged with debris to save me then. I am desperate still.

The trees themselves, as in winters past, will survive their burdening, broken thrive. And am I less to You, my God, than they?

We fight our wish to die.

Dad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just as math is the key -- and we will survive or founder, depending on how well the librarians do their jobs. Librarians didn't look glamorous to me but maybe Dad had hit on a not very obvious truth.

Pain and sickness and hunger and fighting—there's no need for any of it. It's as foolish as those little monkeys.

you were both hunter and hunted; the shadow of your thoughts was the beast which killed you.

Bone always outlasts feather

Always leave a way out, unless you really want to find out how hard a man can fight when he's nothing to lose.

Yes, I'm alive, Mat said. I'm usually pretty good at staying alive. I've only failed one time that I can remember, and it hardly counts.