Quotes About Survival

Il diavolo! —dijo Clemenza—. Vinnie Suits, de Brooklyn, jura que vio a Brasi recibir una bala a quemarropa en el corazón, levantarse y salir andando como si no hubiese ocurrido nada.

I divorced myself from the dead guy. I decided that life in Nam was just that way. Whatever emotions I had, needed a cement vault to hide in. And they would hide, even if I had to push them in and shut the door. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Winners got up in the morning; losers didn't.

A bullet or two thudded into the soaked ground right next to me. My asshole froze, then jumped right up my throat as another round broke a branch by my left foot.

You know, you asked me about our lives during the "Great Depression." None of us called it that then. It was just hard times.

As I turned to the chapters dedicated to operations in North Vietnam, the ridiculous gave way to the absurd. I couldn't discern whether the enemy was the North Vietnamese or the U.S. Navy. The enemy might just as easily have been the State Department or even the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They all seemed to have a voice in the ROE, and the tone of the voice was seldom in favor of winning the war, defeating the enemy, or even ensuring the fighter pilot's chances of survival.

Brax: Bernice, your brilliance has cleaned up my mess admirably. You have been remarkable. Benny: Thanks. Assuming we survive all this, I hope I'll remember you saying that.

In every generation, ever since Negroes have been here, every Negro mother and father has had to face that child and try to create in that child some way of surviving this particular world, some way to make the child who will be despised not despise himself. I don't know what "the Negro Problem" means to white people, but this is what it means to Negroes.

On every birthday, when I wake, I now take out the old Nagan, load it with one bullet, spin the chamber and pull the trigger with the barrel in my mouth. I've cheated death nine times. It is my greatest achievement. And three months to go to my next birthday. I can't wait.

Leadership in this environment is categorically humbling because it is virtually impossible for an individual to accumulate enough knowledge to figure out all of the answers. Interdependence and constant change become a way of life in which humility in the face of this complexity has become a critical survival skill.

Learning new things can be easy when there is no unlearning involved. But if the new learning has to displace some old habits of telling, two anxieties come into play that have to be managed. First, survival anxiety is the realization that unless we learn the new behavior, we will be at a disadvantage (metaphorically threatened by extinction). Survival anxiety provides the motivation to learn, even if it is mostly nervous energy.

When we anticipate all of these potential difficulties, we are experiencing learning anxiety, which often accompanies any unlearning and is the primary source of resistance to change. As long as learning anxiety remains stronger than survival anxiety, we will resist change and avoid learning.

One might argue then that in order to learn, one must increase survival anxiety, yet this only increases our overall tension because the sources of learning anxiety do not go away. To facilitate new learning, we need to decrease learning anxiety. We need to feel that a new behavior or practice is worthwhile, not threatening, and possible to learn.

Slowing down is countercultural for many, and varying the pace to coordinate with others may seem a bit inefficient. This is a time to think about survival anxiety and experiment by testing learning anxiety. Is it possible to find a shared work pace that allows for the group to accomplish more? Is it worth it to take a time-out on a project to reflect on what worked and what did not? What may seem to be less efficient may turn out to be more effective.

At last you get in – but you hear a step: The ogre, Life, comes into the room, (He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring) To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese, And stare with his burning eyes at you, And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you, Running up and down in the trap, Until your misery bores him.

Today as in the time of Pliny and Columella, the hyacinth flourishes in Wales, the periwinkle in Illyria, the daisy on the ruins of Numantia; while around them cities have changed their masters and their names, collided and smashed, disappeared into nothingness, their peaceful generations have crossed down the ages as fresh and smiling as on the days of battle.

As the body rolled to the ground Tarzan of the Apes placed his foot upon the neck of his lifelong enemy and, raising his eyes to the full moon, threw back his fierce young head and voiced the wild and terrible cry of his people.

Auf schwarzdunklem Moor oder felswildem Strand Leg' ich mich nieder, wegmüd und krank. Kalt wölbt sich der Himmel von West nach Ost, Weder Mantel noch Decke schützt mich vor Frost. Nur kaltfunkelnde Sterne halten still Wacht – Wer weiß, wo ich ruhn werde in dieser Nacht!«

I was able to support myself by acting alone about six years ago. Until then, I was just scraping by.

The wars fought by human beings are stimulated as a rule primarily by the same instincts as the voracity of a sea slug.

When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drinkNor slumber nor a roof against the rain;Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink.

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.

To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.

Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain.