Quotes About Survival

As llamas have never heard of oxygen, they do not miss it.

The third principle is loss aversion. When directly compared or weighted against each other, losses loom larger than gains. This asymmetry between the power of positive and negative expectations or experiences has an evolutionary history. Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce.

Even in modern humans, System 1 takes over in emergencies and assigns total priority to self-protective actions.

The sophisticated allocation of attention has been honed by a long evolutionary history. Orienting and responding quickly to the gravest threats or most promising opportunities improved the chance of survival

Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce.

and this capability is certainly not restricted to humans. Even in modern humans, System 1 takes over in emergencies and assigns total priority to self-protective actions. Imagine yourself at the wheel of a car that unexpectedly skids on a large oil slick. You will find that you have responded to the threat before you became fully conscious of it.

Framing effects: Different ways of presenting the same information often evoke different emotions. The statement that "the odds of survival one month after surgery are 90%" is more reassuring than the equivalent statement that "mortality within one month of surgery is 10%." Similarly, cold

Survival prospects are poor for an animal that is not suspicious of novelty. However, it is also adaptive for the initial caution

The mystery is how a conception of the utility of outcomes that is vulnerable to such obvious counterexamples survived for so long. I can explain it only by a weakness of the scholarly mind that I have often observed in myself. I call it theory-induced blindness:

We have inherited from our ancestors a great facility to learn when to be afraid. Indeed, one experience is often sufficient to establish a long term aversion and fear.

Riflessi di uccelli continuavano a spalmarsi sull'acqua, anche quando il cielo era vuoto. Un prodigioso fenomeno ottico, disse Humboldt. L'ottica non c'entra niente, disse Mario. Gli uccelli morivano continuamente, in ogni momento, in realtà non facevano quasi nient'altro. I loro spiriti sopravvivevano nei loro riflessi. Da qualche parte dovevano pur andare, giacché in cielo erano indesiderati. E gli insetti?, chiese Bonpland. Quelli non muoiono mai. E proprio lì stava il problema.

A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.

First grub, then ethics." He was implying that ethical decision-making may only be a luxury reserved for those of us who do not need to struggle simply to stay alive.

When the German twentieth-century playwright Bertolt Brecht was asked what he thought of ethics, he replied, "First grub, then ethics." He was implying that ethical decision-making may only be a luxury reserved for those of us who do not need to struggle simply to stay alive.

Businesses that don't do something valuable for others do not survive and should not survive. Profit is a way to measure how useful a business is. That doesn't ever change.

most people do pretty well when things go pretty bad.

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

He did not care what happened as long as he would never be separated from the Master, for he had killed the great fox, and in this miserable, fouled land there was no longer any place for fox, hound, or human being.

A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.

Our lifestyle is evolutionarily unstable--and is therefore in the process of eliminating itself in the perfectly ordinary way.

BLOOD NEVER SLEEPS.

Within a month, five hundred Jews had chosen to kill themselves rather than face another day of torment, including a family of four who lived next door to the Kleins. "They shot themselves, one at a time," Klein said. "I lay in my bed and listened to the whole thing. A shot, followed by sobs. Another shot, more sobs. After the fourth shot, there was no one left to cry, no one but me.

His civilization had flourished for thousands of years in the harsh and unforgiving land of Mesopotamia before anyone had ever heard of a place called America. And it would survive long after the great American experiment receded into history. Of this, Saladin was certain. All great empires eventually collapsed. Only Islam was forever. The

Miss Herzfeld kept walking. And she never looked back. Not once. And she never saw her family again. Within three weeks, they were dead. But not Miss Herzfeld. She was alive because she had blonde hair. And her sister had been turned to ashes because hers was dark.