Best 1668 quotes in «survival quotes» category

I could easily believe that religion could enhance health and hence survival, and that therefore there could be indeed be literally Darwinian survival value, Darwinian selection in favor of religion. None of that of course bears at all upon the truth value of the claims made by religions.

I couldn’t move. It’s something I’m still ashamed of. You always wonder how you’ll handle a moment of crisis; if you’ve got what it takes to fight or if you’ve just been deluding yourself all along that somewhere deep inside you there’s steel beneath the magnolia. Now I knew the truth. There wasn’t. I was all petals and pollen. Good for attracting the procreators who could ensure the survival of our species, but not a survivor myself. I was Barbie after all.

I dance/for the joy of surviving, at the edge of the road.

I did bronze survival swimming. I could save people in a bronzey kind of way.

I do not admire 'the people,' as such. No one really does. Their folk wisdom is usually false, their instincts predatory. Even their sense of survival - so highly developed in the individual - goes berserk in the mass. A crowd is a fool.

I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, is one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survival

I don't know about you, but rattlesnake sounds pretty damn good right now.

I don't really know any survival skills of any kind.

I don't know what takes more courage: surviving a lifelong endurance test because you once made a promise or breaking free, disrupting all your world.

I don't think it's ever hard to punch someone in the face who's just punched you in the face. I would say that anyone who thinks they can walk up to someone and punch them in the face without getting punched back is an idiot. At the end of the day, if someone came up here and punched you, trust me, you would fight back. That is just basic survival.

If a thing is old, it is a sign that it was fit to live. Old families, old customs, old styles survive because they are fit to survive. The guarantee of continuity is quality. Submerge the good in a flood of the new, and good will come back to join the good which the new brings with it. Old-fashioned hospitality, old-fashioned politeness, old-fashioned honor in business had qualities of survival. These will come back.

I don't think we have learnt to keep within the limits. They are quite elastic but there is a point beyond which they will break and then you will get a complete and massive change in the climate in which the survival of human species might not be compatible.

I dream, therefore I exist.

If evolution was worth its salt, by now it should've evolved something better than survival of the fittest. I think a better idea would be survival of the wittiest.

I feel like a tick on a dog.

I feel like a nude little piece of white meat out here.

If evolution is a struggle for survival, why hasn't it ruthlessly eliminated altruists, who seem to increase another's prospects of survival at the cost of their own?

If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have been among the most important. . . . It is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially when a fight or a hunt is promised as part of the fun.

If humans are not required to earn a living to be provided survival needs, many are going to want very much to be productive, but not at those tasks they did not choose to do but were forced to accept in order to earn money. Instead, humans will spontaneously take upon themselves those tasks that world society really needs to have done.

If I lived by some code, my actions would become predictable. The enemy would take advantage of this and I’d be killed. An honorable death doesn’t exist. Death is death. But it’s funny that survival and revenge require the same thing: no honor codes, no supposed higher principles to aspire to, no mercy

If I had to sum up my practical skills, I would use one word: survival. And operating a hedge fund utilized my training in survival to the fullest.

If I gave this guy more time, there would be a swimming pool and rattan furniture.

I find it extraordinary that a straightforward if inelegant device for ensuring the survival of the species should involve human beings in such emotional turmoil. Does sex have to be taken so seriously?

If only the fit survive and if the fitter they are the longer they survive, then Volvox must have demonstrated its superb fitness more conclusively than any higher animal ever has.

If intelligence is our only edge, we must learn to use it better, to shape it, to understand its limitations and deficiencies -- to use it as cats use stealth, as katydids use camouflage -- to make it the tool of our survival.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

If our supreme value is the development of the Western tradition - of a man for whom the highest thing in life is man, for whom love for man, respect for man, and the dignity of man, are supreme values - then we cannot ask the question that says, "if it is better for our survival, might we drop these values?

If we can get that realistic feminine morality working for us, if we can trust ourselves and so let women think and feel that an unwanted child or an oversize family is wrong -- not ethically wrong, not against the rules, but morally wrong, all wrong, wrong like a thalidomide birth, wrong like taking a wrong step that will break your neck -- if we can get feminine and human morality out from under the yoke of a dead ethic, then maybe we'll begin to get somewhere on the road that leads to survival.

If the losses don't hurt, your financial survival is tenuous.

If we do not speak for Earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be?

If you ever heard that old saying, where there's smoke there's fire; well that's a load of bull.

If we move toward the weaponisation of space, we can bid farewell to the planet. The chances of survival are very slight.

If we want to cure the things that threaten life, limb and even survival, we need to heal our sick political system. That is, not just to address our physical ailments, but the things that determine whether we're going to survive into the next century. That is war, climate change, poverty, etc. We've got to fix our politics.

If you choose to get off the beaten path here, you'll find yourself in a situation where everything looks the same.

If you have a particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it.

If you can recognize illusion as illusion, it dissolves. The recognition of illusion is also its ending. Its survival depends on your mistaking it for reality.

If you fall from here, if you're not dead you're gonna wish you were.

I grew up in the prolonged survival of the great age of the horse, with harness and saddle and sleigh bells and horse pictures, not as antiques but the facts of our lives.

I guess I consider myself a cartoonist first, though I was "trained" as a painter/printmaker/sculptor. If there's still any resistance to cartooning in the nuts-and-bolts world of acquiring the means of survival, it's probably mostly on the pay scale. If graphic novels are selling really well and are "growing the book market" or whatever it is a businessman would say about them, I don't see it in the remuneration offered by some of the publishers.

If you're young and inexperienced you might accept what people tell you, that everything's going to be fine, it's okay. It's usually other young people saying that, who don't know any better. It's good to have a survival instinct because increasingly, especially in the whole Arab Spring sort of violence, you're mostly with young people who have not experienced what they're doing before.

I guess everybody who isn't dead yet is a survivor.

I had to stop hoping so much that a ship would rescue me. I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me. In my experience, a castaway’s worst mistake is to hope too much and to do too little. Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one’s life away.

I had developed a survival skill of using my wit to score for myself. If a scene was dying, I'd lob in these little bombshell lines that would get me some attention and a laugh without really helping the scene.

I have never known a patient to portray his parents more negatively than he actually experienced them in childhood but always more positively--because idealization of his parents was essential for his survival.

I have to take off my hat to Matt, he's trying crazy hard to get this fire started.

I have no qualms about saying I am more confident in the medical treatment in America. The breast cancer survival rate is 20 per cent higher than in the UK.

I have one instinct stronger than any other thing in life, and that is the instinct for survival.

I know this guy is a musician so I hope he can play us a tune that could get us the hell out of here.

I imagine a future where many of us will call ourselves dancers and collaborate to make an art which concerns itself with primary areas of life... for me, peace is a communal work process, a collective vision. The dance itself tries to exemplify a few of these methods in a truly grounded and practical way so that the people can say: yes, there are prospects of survival.

I knew that if I wanted to survive, it wasn't about healing or trying to forget. It was about how I could use my life to answer what had happened to us. In many ways, it saved my life.