Quotes About Survival

With or without us, the wild will return. .... It seems that, however grave our mistakes, nature will be able to overcome them, given the chance. The living world has survived mass extinctions several times before. But we humans cannot assume that we will do the same.

A species of willow developed that does not grow vertically upwards, like it's European and American relatives. To do so would to risk being flattened by the ferocious Artic wind. Instead it grows horizontally, keeping close to the ground. Even in the most favorable circumstances it seldom exceeds four inches in height. But it may become as long as some if it's southern relatives are tall. When you walk across a carpet of such prostrate tree, you are, in effect walking over a woodland canopy.

It seems that, however grave our mistakes, nature will be able to overcome them, given the chance.

If we were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if they were to disappear, the land's ecosystems would collapse.

The natural world is fading. The evidence is all around. It has happened during my lifetime. I have seen it with my own eyes. It will lead to our destruction.

Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist, survived a Nazi concentration camp to write Man's Search for Meaning,

I didn't know a time when there wasn't a war because I spent all my time from the age of two or three to eight in a coal cellar really.

Life was not fair. If you wanted something you had to take it. Before someone else took it from you. Neatly dissected down to its essence, life was one long series of lily pad hoppings. The quick and the resourceful were able to adapt and survive; all others were simply crushed as a more nimble creature landed on the lily pad they had occupied for too long.

The humiliation...I could have died there and I would have been happier.

Nature places a simple constraint on those who leave the flock to go their own way: they get eaten. In society it's a bit more complicated. Nonetheless the admonition stands: avoiding the unknown has considerable survival value. Society, nature, and artmaking tend to produce guarded creatures.

Robert Burns, author of the book I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang!,

If you were sitting next to me 10,000 years ago we'd be under ice. So thank God for global warming for ending that ice age; we wouldn't be here otherwise.

Let me first tell you one thing: It doesn't matter what the world says about Israel; it doesn't matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive.

After ejection I had about thirty seconds to make my last statement in freedom before I landed in the main street of a little village right ahead. And so help me, I whispered to myself: "Five years down there, at least. I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.

I believe that if ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage if there were enough tarragon around.

The arrogance of power is the best hope for the survival of freedom.

Adventure and excitement are the two things missing from civilization. Danger keeps you on your toes. You'll never feel as alive as when death is over your shoulder.

Live as long as you can. Die when you can't help it.

if today you sold everything you possessed and gave it to the poor, you would indeed take a huge economic hit. But you would survive. You'd collect your next paycheck.

It is better to have a world united than a world divided; but it is also better to have a world divided than a world destroyed.

The whole theme of motherhood and family life, with those sweet affections which illuminate it, must be the fountain spring of present happiness and future survival.

Now all the gang's dead except for me and Russell.

Build a man a fire and you warm him for a night. Set a man on fire and you warm him for the rest of his life.

At the most practical level, a reformed, enlightened, hopeful Catholic Church is essential to the thriving — even to the survival — of the human species.