Quotes About Survival

To me, poetry is about survival first of all. Survival of the individual self, survival of the emotional life.

All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare, awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.

The peace of mind, is very essential for our health. So in that level, I think scientific finding, immense benefit to get our wellness and eventually conviction, peace of mind is not just a luxurious item, but peace of mind is actually very important for our survival, for our healthy survival.

But nothing less than the most radical imagination will carry us beyond this place, beyond the mere struggle for survival, to that lucid recognition of our possibilities which will keep us impatient, and unresigned to mere survival.

There's a misconception that survival of the fittest means survival of the most aggressive. The adjective 'Darwinian' used to refer to ruthless competition; you used to read that in business journals. But that's not what Darwinian means to a biologist; it's whatever leads to reproductive success.

We mistakenly assume that bodily survival has a higher precedence than ego survival. This is simply not generally true. Ego will happily destroy the body for its own sake. Look at overweight executives headed for heart attacks on the way to getting their pictures in Fortune or anorexic models suffering slow starvation on their way to getting their pictures in Vogue. Protecting ego is the general case.

Death is natural and necessary, but not just. It is a random force of nature; survival is equally accidental. Each loss is an occasion to remember that survival is a gift.

Traditional folk music is about survival of the fittest song just like evolution is about survival of the fittest organism and generally the more times a song has been passed down the generations the more brilliant and concise it becomes as every link in that chain can add something good or remove something unnecessary.

As a student of conservation biology, I believe that characteristics with survival value will ultimately prevail. There is no survival value in pessimism. If you think failure is inevitable, that view will probably become self-fulfilling.

Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving forever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life?

Growing hemp as nature designed it is vital to our urgent need to reduce greenhouse gases and ensure the survival of our planet.

[on marriage equality] It literally is a threat to the nation's survival in the long run.

You ask, What is our policy? I will say; 'It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.' You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory-victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

Fear is a survival instinct; fear in its way is a comfort for it means that somewhere hope is alive.

Did they launch the last space shuttle yet?” – Sundown “I don’t follow.” – Ren “I’m just thinking maybe we should evacuate the whole planet. I’ve heard the moon is kind of nice this time of year.” – Sundown “Focus your ADD, Jess.” – Ren “I gotcha, brother. What you’re forecasting is six more plagues coming out of the northwest at maximum velocity with a mild chance of survival. Followed by the world getting swallowed whole in a vat of evil.” – Sundown

It should be lifted above partisanship because it's a question of survival. It's a moral issue.

Prison life taught him how little one can get along with, and what extraordinary spiritual freedom and peace such simplification can bring. I remember again, ironically, that today more of us in the world have the luxury of choice between simplicity and complication of life. And for the most part, we, who could choose simplicity, choose complication. War, prison, survival periods, enforce a form of simplicity on us. The monk and the nun choose it of their own free will. But if one accidentally finds it, as I have for a few days, one finds also the serenity it brings.

...the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.

The brain doesn't care about change. As the world's most sophisticated survival organ, the brain cares about loss.

We are facing a tipping point of environmental crisis unprecedented in human history and our very survival is dependent on protecting nature.

It is clear that 'social Darwinism' and 'survival of the fittest' were intended by Obama to evoke feelings of fear and disgust. It is highly doubtful that Obama knows anything about the history of these ideas, and it is even more doubtful that he cares. A concern for truth is not the coin of the political realm.

I learned a lot in those first years in Miami, while struggling just for survival, by observing my father's fortitude.

Humans evolved brains that are pattern-recognition machines, adept at detecting signals that enhance or threaten survival amid a very noisy world. ... But there is only one surefire method of proper pattern recognition, and that is science.

... poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

I don't see [the jungle] so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. It's just - Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain.

But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority. For this reason, the latter constitutes a far greater danger to human survival.

Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.

The essence of all religion is to be willing to risk your life for a belief - not for survival.

Aggressiveness is the principal guarantor of survival.

We're in this together, and if we united and we inter-culturally cooperated, then that might be the key to humanity's survival.

A property of an organism enters into its life (and survival) in many different ways, some more salient than others. But there is no simple notion of its being "for" some function.

That’s the way we see life: your community is your survival. And if you live in a small community like this, even the people you hate you have as friends.

I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation.

The podcast movement was really a creative survival mechanism for standup comics.

I'm fascinated with worlds where there's a small population left, whether it's a movie or these TV shows that fascinate me - 'Falling Skies' or 'The Walking Dead' - they are about survival and triumphing over difficult times. I just have a thing for 'em.

Always retain the ability to walk away, without sentimentality, from a situation that felt unmanageable. That was a basic rule of survival. Don't lift a finger for a lost cause.

There was the natural human survival instinct to be optimistic.

The way past despair and false hope is just letting go. It doesn't improve your odds of survival, but it doesn't waste mental energy.

What's at risk [in 100 years] if we do not take action, truly is the survival of civilization as we know it... Literally that is the case. We have seen global warming so far of just a little bit less than one degree Celsius and look at what's happened. Superstorm Sandy. Boulder Colorado. All these fires. Hurricane Irene one year before.

Clinging to any form of conservatism can be dangerous. Become too conservative and you are unprepared for surprises. You cannot depend on luck. Logic is blind and often knows only its own past. Logic is good for playing chess but is often too slow for the needs of survival.

Loving behavior contributes to the group at the expense of the individual. Competition contributes to the survival of the individual at the expense of the group. In the garden of life, some people are more like flowers, and other people are more like weeds.

All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.

To preserve one's mind intact through a modern college education is a test of courage and endurance, but the battle is worth it and the stakes are the highest possible to man: the survival of reason.

Our immediate striving must be aimed at preventing what, in the present situation, is the greatest threat to the very survival of mankind, the nuclear threat.

It's worse than slave trade because what is being traded is the very knowledge that makes survival possible for 80 percent of the people of this world. These 80 percent live on the biodiversity and the knowledge they have evolved as part of a rich collective heritage involving the use of seeds for growing crops and medicinal plants for healing.

People like the robber barons assumed that the doctrine of the survival of the fittest authenticated them as deserving power. You know, "I'm the richest. Therefore, I'm the best. God's in his heaven, etc." And that reaction of the robber barons was so irritating to people that it made it unfashionable to think of an economy as an ecosystem. But the truth is that it is a lot like an ecosystem. And you get many of the same results.

What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.