quotations about survival
To so many, survival is skin deep. A broken heart and troubled mind are masked by physical recovery. In that moment, it was as if my strength and struggle were an afterthought. An expectation. I mean, I had been lucky to survive, hadn't I? Luckier still to be walking without a cane. But what about my crumbling interior? The sleepless nights? Were my nightmares as real as those of the unlucky?
BRANDON J. WOLF
"Pulse victim: How I learned the meaning of survival", CNN, June 11, 2017
There walked a lonely man, silent, mute, the only man
Not knowing how, not knowing why was he the sole survivor
Why should he be alive, breathing still while others died
And the only question, why was he the sole survivor?
BLUE OYSTER CULT
"Sole Survivor", Fire of Unknown Origin
Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.
MAY SARTON
Journal of a Solitude
All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.
YANN MARTEL
Life of Pi
Survival is a natural instinct wherein the biological directive is to survive at all costs; this applies to all organisms, including the smallest cells, to all species and life forms and to celestial bodies such as my own.
PEPPER LEWIS
Gaia Speaks: Sacred Earth Wisdom
Suppose you were the last one left? Suppose you did that to yourself?
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Road
Did you think I'd crumble
Did you think I'd lay down and die
Oh no, not I
I will survive
Oh as long as I know how to love
I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my love to give
And I'll survive
I will survive
FREDDIE PERREN & DINO FEKARIS
"I Will Survive"
There's more to life than just surviving ... but ... sometimes just surviving is all you get.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
"We'll never survive!" "Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has."
WILLIAM GOLDMAN
The Princess Bride
The only thing that matters in the end is your own survival. It's what humans and cockroaches are best at.
SUSAN EE
World After
Other things being equal, if you can figure the world out, you have a better chance of survival. At least until the invention of nuclear weapons.
CARL SAGAN
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
How much blood will you shed to stay alive?
DARREN LYNN BOUSMAN & LEIGH WHANNELL
Saw II
It is of course true that the fittest genes always survive, because all systematic properties and top down effects then count in favour of single genes. This is because all assumed higher levels involved are somehow based on the genes composing them. Whatever survives, whether a certain gene-pool by group selection, a high-level gene (although its components were less fit on their own), or a truly selfish gene which does not contribute to any larger system, one may state that without any difference the fittest genes have always survived.
MOMME VON SYDOW
From Darwinian Metaphysics Towards Understanding the Evolution of Evolutionary Mechanisms
Oh we must fight the war for survival we must win
And we will rise again like the strongest lion
Oh we must fight the war for survival we must win
Conquer the demons cause we won't stop tryin'
Oh my soul has been so low
Make them clouds fade to blue
So my love can shine on through
Shine on you
MATISYAHU
"Shine on You"
Wind blew across the sand, he stood alone and he had no plan
And with the last rays of the sun he screamed aloud, began to run
In his tears he sees his face, I am the end of the human race
When I'm gone there'll be no trace for I'm the sole survivor
BLUE OYSTER CULT
"Sole Survivor", Fire of Unknown Origin
I found out all my heroes are just parasites
where are the good people?
compromised by the war we call survival
STRIKE ANYWHERE
"Hollywood Cemetery"
Now, another way of looking at this is as a conflict within the human heart, as a conflict between the bureaucratic, hierarchical, aggressive parts of our nature, which in a neurophysiological sense we share with our reptilian ancestors, and the other parts of our nature, the generalized capacity for love, for compassion, for identification with others who may superficially not look or talk or act or dress exactly like us, the ability to figure the world out that is focused and concentrated in our cerebral cortex. Our survival is (how could we have imagined it to be anything else?) a reflection of our own nature and how we manage these contending tendencies within the human heart and mind.
CARL SAGAN
The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
What was most important about the survivors was our will to be more than those streets proposed.
AMIRI BARAKA
The Autobiography of Leroi Jones
Survival is a relative term, a term in which life is rated in relation to death. It is a value-laden word with both positive and negative connotations. It can also be a guilt-laden word, a word that leaves people labelled as survivors and asking the question 'Why me, when others suffer so much more or have never surfaced to tell the story?"
BARBARA GLASSON
A Spirituality of Survival: Enabling a Response to Trauma and Abuse
You don't ask people with knives in their stomachs what would make them happy; happiness is no longer the point. It's all about survival; it's all about whether you pull the knife out and bleed to death or keep it in.
NICK HORNBY
How to Be Good