survival quotes

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

We have food all around us all the time, and if we haven’t eaten for three hours, we think we’re starving. You’re not starving – human beings can go for 30 days without food.

I have no definite talent or trade, and how I stay alive is largely a matter of magic.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.

I probably wouldn’t have made it this far if I were a refugee.

If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.

This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.

They say cats have nine lives. I’ve had 12 already and I don’t know how many more I’ll have.

Life is warfare.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.

I expected to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life. Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness.

It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.

A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.

I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival.

It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated.

Soldiers, I had lately like to have been taken from you by the attempt of a few desperate men, but by the grace and providence of the gods, I am still preserved.

Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.

Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

America is not nearly done. We’re only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows… what color we will be? It is all something that, maybe, our descendants – if they survive that long – will see.

And God help Bruce Springsteen when they decide he’s no longer God… They’ll turn on him, and I hope he survives it.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

I’d like to be the last person alive in the world! Yes, I’d like to know what happens.

Happiness is just another of the tricks that our genetic system plays on us to carry out its only role, which is the survival of the species.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.

When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

After a hard day of basic training, you could eat a rattlesnake.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I’d still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.