Quotes About Survival

As if in grief, the bamboos were pressed to the ground. But within a matter of minutes, they nodded and waved. They shook off the rain and reoriented themselves toward the sky. My mother was impressed, indeed. Now that , she thought, is strength. Perseverance and flexibility are not opposites. Survival requires certain compromises. Endurance is defined by the last one standing. These were the lessons, I imagine, that she must have learned. My mother resolved to be the last one standing.

Prison is a second-by-second assault on the soul, a day-to-day degradation of the self, an oppressive steel and brick umbrella that transforms seconds into hours and hours into days.

Self-preservation is one of the signs of sentient life.

One of my Black ancestors was photographed carrying diapers over his head after a flood. They called him a 'looter.' A white man was photographed doing the same thing. They called him a 'survivor.

Hey, don't think, I'm gonna die. Think, Hey, I might live.

My mother, wore the mask, she thought as she napped the neck of the lead enforcer. And now I wear it. But it is not all that I am. Her friends -- her family -- were disarming the enforcers, or killing them before they could react. Some carried simple fishing knives loaned by the locals, and others had grabbed their own weapons from the sand. They were improving, adapting, and surviving, the way Enfys's mother had taught them. They underestimate us, and that is why they lose

What is the hormone driving you to do?" the swarm asked. "Fight, fly, freeze?

Me, I've seen 45 years, and I've only figured out one thing. That's this: if a person would just make the effort, there's something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there's always something you can learn. I read somewhere that they said there's even different philosophies in razors. Fact is, if it weren't for that, nobody'd survive.

We do not like the idea that any other creature can be better than we are. It is highly probable that if we ever have to face a superior race, we will die of it.

The forgiveness of the weak is the air you strong ones breath, David. Didn't you know? You don't see it but you felt it just then. They allow you to go on living.

Be careful," she said. "You can't fight a tiger." "Yes you can," he said. "You can if you are a tiger yourself.

On the bottom shelf M. kept the books from his childhood days: Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, the Iliad - they are described in The Noise of Time and happened to have been saved by M.'s father. Most of them later perished in Kalinin when I was fleeing from the Germans. The way we have scurried to and fro in the twentieth century, trapped between Hitler and Stalin!

A celestial camera recorded my every movement, impartially, without judgement or pity. I was marked; I was of interest; I would survive.

For purely selfish reasons, the old man had preserved what the rest of the world had destroyed.

You could say I'm a cat with nine lives. As long as there's mice to catch, I intend to keep hunting.

What did I tell you, Fanny, about air-raids not killing people. Here we are, right as rain. My bed simply went through the floor, Plon-plon and I went on it, most comfortable.

Now rabbits eat their children - somebody ought to explain to them how it's only a complex.

Daddy Was a Numbers Runner by Louise Meriwether is the story of Francie Coffin, who is growing up in the spirit-deadening ghettos of Harlem in the 1930s, in a family struggling to survive intact.

MATTHEW'S RULES OF SURVIVAL 1. Sometimes, the people who mean you harm are the ones who say they love you. 2. Fear is your friend. When you feel it, act. 3. Protect the little ones. 4. If you coped before, you can cope now. 5. Always remember: In the end, the survivor gets to tell the story.

The human instinct for self-preservation is strong. I know, because mine pulls at me, too, like the needle on a compass. And everybody - I've been reading some philosophy - everybody seems to agree that the instinct and responsibility of all humans is to take care of themselves first. You have the right to self-defense. You have the right to survive, if you can.

Fear is a survival response. Fear makes us run, it makes us leap, it can make us act superhuman. But we need somewhere to run to. Without that, the fear is only paralyzing. So the real trick, the only hope, really, is to allow the terror of an unlivable future to be balanced and soothed by the prospect of building something much better than many of us have previously dared hope.

I had just one goal—to stay alive until the next day … . But it wasn't just to survive, but to survive as me. —Mario Villani

Not so long ago, disasters were periods of social levelling, rare moments when atomized communities put divisions aside and pulled together. Increasingly, however disasters are the opposite: they provide windows into a cruel and ruthlessly divided future in which money and race buy survival.

To [Heartland president Joseph Bast], it looks like the end of the world. It's not, of course. But it is, for all intents and purposes, the end of his world.