“Nothing could have survived our life.”

Generation of Greatness (1957)
Context: In thinking about what the human animal might have gone through in the evolutionary process, have you wondered how some of the small changes which must have occurred could have had survival value? Haven't you wondered how they could have survived, when, in all of our experimental work every small change we make dies? … How many changes must have occurred in the human eye, occurred and died, before one change came along — an apparently trivial change … that gave the whole animal a significant increase in its power to perceive and hunt down its enemies and find its food. This is the kind of change that survives.

The World Wildlife Fund Congress, London, (1970)
The Environmental Revolution: Speeches on Conservation, 1962–77 (1978)
Context: It is an old cliche to say that the future is in the hands of the young. This is no longer true. The quality of life to be enjoyed or the existence to be survived by our children and future generations is in our hands now.

“The only meaning of life, if it can be said to have meaning, is to survive. My brothers and sisters, herding their children on the plains, find meaning in the simple pattern of their lives and need nothing more. They are immersed in the processes of the world: all is one. That is their religion. They seek no other meaning.
“Your race, now, believes that expansion is all. You think to outrace your dark destiny, believe that the whole universe is yours when you understand so little of it.”

Chapter 4 “At the Core” (p. 271)
Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

Source: Yours to Keep

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Dreamfever

Source: Dark Age (2019), Ch. 16: Rider of the Storm; Rhone

Real Me
Lyrics, Rainbow