Quotes About Survival

The Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest has been substituted by a philosophy of the survival of the slickest.

Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest - then we can all die laughing.

There's no such things as survival of the fittest. Survival of the most adequate, maybe. It doesn't matter whether a solution's optimal. All that matters is whether it beats the alternative.

The [peppered-moth] experiments show the effects of predation on the survival of the dark and of the normal forms of the Peppered Moth in a clean environment and in one polluted by smoke. The experiments beautifully demonstrate natural selection--or survival of the fittest--in action, but they do not show evolution in progress, for however the population may alter in their content of light, intermediate or dark forms, all the moths remain from beginning to end Biston Betularia.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch-or build a cyclotron-without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think

[You Got To Make It Through The World] it's kind of a survival song. Survival is what's happening and it's basically a song about that.

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.

People will do amazing things to ensure their survival.

When we were engaged in the problems of survival we had no time to have anything to do with culture.

There are those who receive as birthright an adequate or at least unquestioned sense of self and those who set out to reinvent themselves, for survival or for satisfaction, and travel far. Some people inherit values and practices as a house they inhabit; some of us have to burn down that house, find our own ground, build from scratch, even as a psychological metamorphosis.

What are we to think of the shortsightedness of the great mass of people who are content to do nothing about it, and even worse, the greed or venality of the rich and powerful who deliberately bar the way to human survival?

People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values.

They were here all at once, but not together. Survival took self-absorption, and it made them strangers with nothing to do and no way to relate. Emergencies gave you a shape and a plot to take part in, while death was no story at all. It left you nothing.

I've learned survival secrets from being on camera, and then translated them into everyday life.

Cooperation for mutual benefit, a survival strategy very common in natural systems, is one that humanity needs to emulate.

The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.

My father was a lorry driver, very rarely at home. The house was run by my mother, and because there were 10 or so kids, there was no time for individual attention. It was about survival. It was about where the next meal was coming from.

Other ways of looking at the environmental or climate change stuff is to frame it in the context that it is simultaneously a public health issue. One out of eight premature deaths worldwide happens because of air pollution. The worst power plant in America kills 278 people a year and causes 445 heart attacks. So, when we improve air quality we improve our lives, and at the same time we improve the climate as well. We must see climate policy from this perspective and not as an abstract threat that may threaten our survival in 100 years.

In particular, for younger researchers on whom the future of mankind may depend. We believe that they are working with all the scientific wisdom at their disposal for the preservation of the inheritance of the earth and for the lasting survival of mankind.

There are doubtless all kinds of ways of explaining why people want security, but I do not think we can start with the psychological explanations. Even psychological states like fear or desire for safety are conditioned by social and political forms of intimidation and scare-mongering that intensify those emotions, and even work to persuade people that nothing less than their survival is at stake.

That moment was very important because it was political. That's what has to be done, so they struck a deal. She figures his is a well-thought-out motivation that she felt was worthy trade-off. The motivation here is survival, and she has to think like a leader.

The question to ask is whether the risk of traveling to space is worth the benefit. The answer is an unequivocal yes, but not only for the reasons that are usually touted by the space community: the need to explore, the scientific return, and the possibility of commercial profit. The most compelling reason, a very long-term one, is the necessity of using space to protect Earth and guarantee the survival of humanity.

Unless you are in a survival situation, if you allow yourself to be creative, to be thinking, to be developing, there will be outbursts. You can say, almost beauteously, when you have less time for art, you have to select your best practice.

It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a 'higher standard of living than any have ever known.' It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival.

All thoughts are just junk. Essentially, they are coming from the limited experience of past. These thoughts are useful for your survival process. You've picked up some amount of information; you want to survive in the world; this information is useful. If you're looking at life itself, these thoughts are meaningless.

I train like I'm training for the Olympics or for a Mr. America contest, the way I've always trained my whole life. You see, life is a battlefield. Life is survival of the fittest... How many healthy people do you know? How many happy people do you know? Think about it. People work at dying, they don't work at living. My workout is my obligation to life. It's my tranquilizer. It's part of the way I tell the truth--and telling the truth is what's kept me going all these years.

Are we not witnessing a strange tableau of survival whenever a bird alights on the head of a crocodile, bringing together the evolutionary offspring of Triassic and Jurassic?

There was the natural human survival instinct to be optimistic.

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.

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.

Historically the opposition to abortion and birth control ... stemmed from the urgency of the need to decrease the mortality and morbidity rates and to increase the population ... in the matter of abortion the human rights of the mother with her family must take precedence over the survival of a few weeks' old foetus without sense or sensibility.

Modern Darwinism makes it abundantly clear that many less ruthless traits, some not always admired by robber barons and Fuhrers - altruism, general intelligence, compassion - may be the key to survival.

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.

Once we are self-aware, we must choose purposes and principles to live by; otherwise the vacuum will be filled, and we will lose our self-awareness and become like groveling animals who live primarily for survival and propagation. People who exist on that level aren't living; they are "being lived".

A new, self-employed architect scientist is the one in all the world who may accelerate realization of a high-standard survival for all, as now completely practical within the scope of available technology.

For a country boy, poor as I was, whose constant worry was to be able to have enough to eat, the Army guaranteed one's survival.

You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate." "Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously.

UNICEF is helping mothers realize their dreams for the future - a future in which the basic needs for a child's survival: food, clean water and simple health care - are guaranteed.

A humankind abandoned in its earlier formative stage becomes its own greatest threat to survival.

If the mortality rate seems high we must realize that Nature is a ruthless teacher. There are no second chances in Mother Nature's Survival Course.

Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth... Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves... Nevertheless... such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction... and any deeper meaning is illusory...

China is a country with a record of continuous self-government going back 4,000 years, the only society that has achieved this. One must start with the assumption that they must have learnt something about the requirements for survival, and it is not always to be assumed that we know it better than they do.

I cannot have survival as my only goal. That would be too boring. My goal is to come back in my best running form. It is good for me to have that goal; it will help me.

Making my family laugh when I was little - it became an addiction. It was a kind of survival.

The color of your skin is your uniform in this ultimate battle for the survival of the West.

As a Jew, it is my historic responsibility to defend the Jewish people. I feel this responsibility for the survival of the Jewish people. We're not going to accept any decision by anybody else about security of the State of Israel. It is our role and only our role.

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.