Quotes About Survival

Le danger consiste en ce que nous devenions de véritables habitants du désert et que nous nous sentions bien chez lui.

Tant que nous souffrons, dans les conditions du désert, nous sommes encore humains, encore intacts .

A divine people lives in a world in which it is the born persecutor of all other weaker species, or the born victim of all other stronger species. Only the rules of the animal kingdom can possibly apply to its political destinies.

there is no class that cannot be wiped out if a sufficient number of its members are murdered.

In the eyes of the Jews, thinking exclusively in terms of their own history, the catastrophe that had befallen them under Hitler, in which a third of the people perished, appeared not as the most recent of crimes, the unprecedented crime of genocide, but, on the contrary, as the oldest crime they knew and remembered.

We did not care if we died today or only tomorrow, and there were times when we cursed the morning that found us still alive.

We had the whole population against us," Jews hidden by Christian families could "be counted on the fingers of one hand," perhaps five or six out of a total of thirteen thousand—but on the whole the situation had, surprisingly, been better in Poland than in any other Eastern European country.

The real horror of the concentration and extermination camps lies in the fact that the inmates, even if they happen to keep alive, are more effectively cut off from the world of the living than if they had died, because terror enforces oblivion.

What for Hitler , the sole, lonely plotter of the Final Solution (never had a conspiracy, if such it was, needed fewer conspirators and more executors), was among the war's main objectives, with its implementation given top priority, regardless of economic and military considerations, and what for Eichmann was a job, with its daily routine, its ups and downs, was for the Jews quite literally the end of the world.

Just because the Jews had been used as a non-national element, they could be of value in war and peace only as long as during the war everybody tried consciously to keep the possibilities of peace intact, only as long as everybody's aim was a peace of compromise and the re-establishment of a modus vivendi. As soon as "victory or death" became a determining policy, and war actually aimed at the complete annihilation of the enemy, the Jews could no longer be of any use.

Jews concerned with the survival of their people would, in a curious desperate misinterpretation, hit on the consoling idea that antisemitism, after all, might be an excellent means for keeping the people together, so that the assumption of eternal antisemitism would even imply an eternal guarantee of Jewish existence.

Towards evening, he reached a poor little cottage that seemed ready to fall, and only remained standing because it could not decide on which side to fall first.

You don't worry about happiness and fulfilment when you're starving.

There was an old joke about being left on a deserted island with an editor. You are starving. All you have left is a glass of orange juice. Days pass. You are near death. You are about to drink the juice when the editor grabs the glass from your hand and pees into it. You look at him, stunned . There, the editor says, handing you the glass. It just needed a little tweaking.

Those who believe that we are anything other than animals are blind. All humans are savages. The ones who are well fed are just lazier. They don't need to kill to get their food. So they dress up and find so-called loftier pursuits that make them believe that they are somehow above it all. Such nonsense. Savages are just hungrier. That was all. You do horrible things to survive. Anyone who believes that they are above that is delusional.

Death sucks. Death sucks, mostly because it forces those who stay behind to survive. Death isn't merciful enough to take you too. Instead, death constantly jams down your throat the awful lesson that life does indeed go on, no matter what.

Survival is the thing. The mind will twist to survive. Anything can become normal.

And bad stays. Bad doesn't go away. You bury bad, it digs itself out. You throw bad in the middle of the ocean, it comes back at you like a tidal wave.

Everything," she said. Her mouth tightened. "Stewart Green was a psychopath. He stalked me. He beat me. He threatened to kill me." "Why?" "What part of the word 'psychopath' confused you?

We always seem to be on the eve of destruction. And we always seem to get through it.

It was one lesson he never forgot. You don't sit back when you or a loved one is being assaulted. And you don't act like the goverment with their proportional responses and all that nonsense. If someone hurts you, mercy and pity must be put aside. You eliminate the enemy. You scorch the earth.

horrible instinctive part of you, is almost happy because now you will get a bite-and-a-half-size sliver of bread today instead of just a bite size. Those who believe that we are anything other than animals are blind. All humans are savages. The ones who are well fed are just lazier. They don't need to kill to get their food. So they dress up and find so-called loftier pursuits that make them believe that they are somehow above it all. Such nonsense. Savages are just hungrier.

You don't worry about happiness and fulfillment when you're starving. It is good to remember that.

We always seem to be on the eve of destruction. And we always seem to get through it. Maybe we all survive the destruction we have wrought.