Quotes About Survival

This was what was left of a human individual when you took away his home,his family, his friends, his city, his country,his world: a being without context, whose past had faded, whose future was bleak, an entity stripped of name, of meaning,of the whole of life except a temporarily beating heart.

Violent action is unclear to most of those who get caught up in it. Experience is fragmentary; cause and effect,why and how, are torn apart. Only sequence exists. First this then that. And afterward, for those who survived, a lifetime of trying to understand

It was the resilience in human beings that represented their best chance of survival, their ability to look the unimaginable, the unconscionable, the unprecedented in the eye.

His mother had survived decades of marriage to his angry, disappointed, alcoholic father by developing what she called a "forgettery" instead of a memory. She woke up every day and forgot the day before. He, too, seemed to lack a memory for trouble, and woke up remembering only what he yearned for. But he did not act upon his yearning. She had left for America and that was for the best.

El hecho de estar vivo te compensa de las cosas que te hace la vida.

His mother had survived decades of marriage to his angry, disappointed, alcoholic father by developing what she called a "forgettery" instead of a memory. She woke up every day and forgot the day before.

One's goal is the shedding of mental obstacles that prevent one from being flooded with the glorious universal, Love as Being. It is a goal, therefore, that requires of us the absolute and irreversible abandonment of reason, for love is without reason, above it and beyond it; it comes without a rational explanation and lives on when there is no reason for it to survive.

Life damages the living.

How does newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoining is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine? Is birth always a fall? Do angels have wings? Can men fly?

So he was a sort of anti-Scheherazade, Dunia told him, the exact opposite of the storyteller of The Thousand Nights and One Night: her stories saved her life, while his put his life in danger.

A live dog is better than a dead lion, but death is preferable to poverty.

orphans know that their survival requires them to be prepared to do whatever is necessary. That there are no limits.

Alles is strategie. Dat is de wijsheid van de spin. Alles is voedsel. Dat is de wijsheid van de haai.

How does newness come into the world? How is it born? Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made? How does it survive, extreme and dangerous as it is? What compromises, what deals, what betrayals of its secret nature must it make to stave off the wrecking crew, the exterminating angel, the guillotine? Is birth always a fall? Do angels have wings? Can men fly?

Without water we are nothing, the traveler thought. Even an emperor, denied water, would swiftly turn to dust. Water is the real monarch and we are all its slaves.

People didn't like [my persistent existence]. Because I should have died. Now that I've almost died, everybody loves me. . . . That was my mistake, back then. Not only did I live but I tried to live well. Bad mistake. Get fifteen stab wounds, much better.

Over 99 percent of the species that ever walked, flew, or slithered upon this earth are now extinct. This fact alone appears to rule out intelligent design.

Robert Trivers argues, for instance, that people who can believe their own lies turn out to be the best liars of all—and an ability to deceive rivals has obvious advantages in the state of nature.

The sea squirt—a very simple marine creature—swims about during its juvenile phase looking for a place to settle, and once it settles and starts filter feeding, it digests its own brain, because it no longer has any need for perceptual or motor competence. This is often used as an unkind analogy for getting tenure in academia.

In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.

The strong live and the weak die. There is some bloodshed, and out of it emerges a much leaner industry, which tends to survive.

The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.

In times of crisis, people reach for meaning. Meaning is strength. Our survival may depend on our seeking and finding it.

Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great individuals, like great companies, find a way to transform weakness into strength.