“I think that little by little I'll be able to solve my problems and survive.”
Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 168.
Context: Creatures really have divergent and conflicting desires. Their distinct motives are not (usually) wishes for survival or for means-to-survival, but for various particular things to be done and obtained while surviving. And these can always conflict. Motivation is fundamentally plural. It must be so because, in evolution, all sorts of contingincies and needs arise, calling for all sorts of different responses. An obsessive creature, constantly dominated by one kind of motive, would not survive.
“I don't care if they eat me alive, I've got better things to do than survive.”
“The art of letters will come to an end before A. D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.”
Quoted in A Serious Character (1988) by Humphrey Carpenter
“Cradle the weight of your life
You can survive what lies before you.”
Seasons Change
Anastacia (2004)
“The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth? — Because one did survive the wreck.”
Epilogue
Moby-Dick: or, the Whale (1851)
“Both men were aware of the imperative held by all warrior races to serve honor before survival.”
Mother Bones (Narrator) p. 10
Last of the Amazons (2002)
On having children — as quoted in Brown, J. & Eliot, M. (2005). I Feel Good: A Memoir of a Life of Soul, p. 248. New American Library: New York. ISBN 0-45121-393-9
Source: The Anarchist Cookbook (1971), Chapter Three: "Natural, Nonlethal, and Lethal Weapons".
