Quotes About Survival

There was no doubt now in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no one would save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

But humanity doesn't want to die. As a species, we have evolved to survive. And the way we do it is by straining and straining and, at last, every few generations, giving birth to genius. The one who invents the wheel. And light. And flight. The one who builds a city, a nation, an empire.

Or maybe laughter was how they pushed painful memories out of their minds. Perhaps laughter was the only way they could keep from killing each other.

Bean just didn't get it. He didn't feel that way about anybody. You just live in the place you're in, you don't worry about where you used to be or where you wish you were, here is where you are and here's where you've got to find a way to survive and lying in bed boo-hooing doesn't help much with that.

I'm saying that America shaped itself with institutions so strong that it could survive corruption, stupidity, vanity, ambition, recklessness, and even insanity in its chief executive.

Any animal is willing to kill in order to save itself.' 'Any animal is willing to kill the Other,' said Ender. 'But the higher beings include more and more living things within their self-story, until at last there is no Other. Until the needs of others are more important than any private desires. The highest beings of all are the ones who are willing to pay any personal cost for the good of those who need them.

That's how we're going to face the end of the world? Reading a book?

The whole world always burns...Or it floods. Or some insect eats the crops and you starve...Every baby you have dies eventually, no matter what you do. Yet we have babies and try to go on.

And all I managed, barely, was endurance.

Nobody wants xenocide, but if it happens, I want to make sure it's the other guys that disappear. When it comes to war, human is human and alien is alien. All that ramen business goes up in smoke when we're talking about survival.

What if the first homo sapiens had felt that way? We'd all still be neanderthals, and when the Buggers came they would have blasted us all to bits and that would be that." "We didn't evolve from neanderthals," said Bean. "Well, it's a good thing we have that little fact squared away," said Petra.

Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.

They make Lord of the Flies look like Pollyanna." "When did you read Pollyanna?" "It was a book?

The limbic node deep in her brain didn't understand that she no longer lived in a tree, no longer had to panic when she felt herself to be falling.

If good people weren't so trusting of bad ones, the human race would have died out long ago—most women never would have let most men near them.

humans will always act to preserve their own lives—except for the times when they don't.

In the face of a threat to the survival of the species, all these planetside trivialities are put aside until the crisis passes.

La naturaleza no puede hacer evolucionar a las especies que no tienen un deseo de supervivencia.

Individual human beings are all tools, that the others use to help us all survive.

As far as the rest of the biosphere is concerned, we could be wiped out and it would adjust, it would get on with the next step in evolution. But humanity doesn't want to die. As a species, we have evolved to survive.

The people in the King's city [...] thought that these highvalley folk lived like animals. But in truth these villagers lived pure human life. they needed each other to survive, and knew it. They had no conspiracies and no secrets, no ambitions and no feuds. They couldn't afford the luxury of treating any man or woman or child as expendable.

I'm a mammal," said Bean. "I try to live forever whether I actually want to or not.

This wasn't about killing Bean—that was just a bonus. It was about getting Bean's babies.

Civilization is only a pretense; in the crisis, we become mere apes again, forgetting the rational biped of our pretensions and become instead the hairy primate at the mouth of the cave, screeching at the enemy, wishing it would go away, fingering the heavy stone that we'll use the moment it comes close enough.