Quotes about survival (1885 quotes, page 19)

“They survive. Ah yes, survive. And achieve nothing to deserve it.”

Paul J. McAuley (1955) British writer

“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)

“I was very young, and those events affected me deeply. I feel the time given to me doesn't belong only to me. In everything – my writing, my travelling, my happiness – I live partly on behalf of those who weren't able to survive. I feel I'm living their share of life.”

Kyung-sook Shin (1963) Korean writer

On being a survivor in “Kyung-Sook Shin: 'In my 20s I lived through an era of terrible political events and suspicious deaths'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/07/kyung-sook-shin-south-korea-interview in The Guardian (2014 Jun 7)

Time , Happiness , Travel , Life

“Transhumanism is the next logical step in the evolution of humankind, and it is the existential solution to the long-term survival of the human race.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

“An artist is the magician put among men to gratify — capriciously — their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships — and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes — husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer.”

Tom Stoppard Travesties

Joyce, Act I
Stoppard called this "the most important" speech in the play
Source: Travesties (1974)

War , Art , Horse , Relation ships

“I love being engaged, but I don’t really have a desire to get married, I always felt like marriage should be more of a reward… For surviving your relationship… I feel everyone’s got it backwards”

Liv Tyler (1977) American actress, producer and former model

Liv Tyler is the October cover https://www.tatler.com/article/liv-tyler-october-2019-cover-star (August 30, 2019)

Marriage , Love , Making love , Feeling

“I have been impressed time and again by the schizophrenic character of many businessmen. They are capable of being extremely far‐sighted and clear‐headed in matters that are internal to their businesses. They are incredibly short sighted and muddle‐headed in mat ters [sic!] that are outside their businesses but affect the possible survival of business in general. This short sightedness is strikingly exemplified in the calls from many businessmen for wage and price guidelines or controls or incomes policies. There is nothing that could do more in a brief period to destroy a market system and replace it by a centrally controlled system than effective governmental control of prices and wages. The short‐sightedness is also exemplified in speeches by business men on social responsibility. This may gain them kudos in the short run. But it helps to strengthen the already too prevalent view that the ptirsuit [sic!] of profits is wicked and im moral [sic!] and must be curbed and controlled by external forces. Once this view is adopted, the external forces that curb the market will not be the social consciences, however highly developed, of the pontificating executives; it will be the iron fist of Government bureaucrats. Here, as with price and wage controls, business men seem to me to reveal a suicidal impulse.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

“A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits” (Sept. 1970)

Time , Business , Help , Suicide

“Currently, we see the rise of the 'Extinction Rebellion' deploying direct action, a tactic also utilized by abolitionist and euthanasia groups. The extinction rebellion remains anthropocentric at its heart, because it sees the threat of ecological crisis primarily through the lens of a threat to human survival. It makes no room for the grace of stepping aside and embracing human extinction so that the world may flourish, which would be the most effective form of rebellion against individual death, the death of diversity or species extinction.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Embracing Death, p. 146
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

World , Heart , Making love , Death

“Sensitivity to the death and suffering of boys and men is in competition with our survival instinct.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 36

Death , Suffering , Boy , Men

“Look around you - this [land] is cold, inhospitable. Only the strong survive. Here there are no green fields, no verdant pastures. A warrior is old by the time he is thirty. We have no energy to spend on pretty words.”

David Gemmell book Quest for Lost Heroes

Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 12

Strong , Time

“...if the Catholick religion is destroyd by the Infidels, it is a most contemptible and absurd Idea, that, this, or any Protestant Church, can survive that Event. ... in Ireland particularly, the R[oman] C[atholic] Religion should be upheld in high respect and veneration. ... I am more serious on the positive encouragement to be given to this religion...because the serious and earnest belief and practice of it by its professors forms, as things stand, the most effectual Barrier, if not the sole Barrier, against Jacobinism.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to William Smith, Member of the Irish Parliament (29 January 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VIII: September 1794–April 1796 (1969), p. 131
1790s

Idea , Religion

“What's happening in the world and in the ocean has changed our time horizon. We can be incredibly pessimistic on the short term, and mourn what we lost and what we really took for granted. But we can still be optimistic on the long term, and we can still be ambitious about what we fight for and what we expect from our governments, from our planet. Corals have been living on planet Earth for hundreds of millions of years. They survived the extinction of the dinosaurs. They're badasses. An individual coral can go through tremendous trauma and fully recover if it's given a chance and it's given protection. Corals have always been playing the long game, and now so are we.”

Kristen Marhaver American marine biologist

Source: Why I still have hope for coral reefs https://www.ted.com/talks/kristen_marhaver_why_i_still_have_hope_for_coral_reefs (April 2017)

Chance , Time , Game , World

“Evolution was a paste-and-baling-wire process that came up with half-assed solutions like pushing teeth through babies’ gums and menstruation. Survival of the fittest was a technical term that covered a lot more close-enough-is-close-enough than actual design.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: The Expanse, Tiamat's Wrath (2019), Chapter 29 (p. 309)

Past , Baby

“When I announced in April of 1961 that this kind of comprehensive tax reform would follow the bill enacted this year, I had hoped to present it in an atmosphere of a balanced budget. But it has been necessary to augment sharply our nuclear and conventional forces, to step up our efforts in space, to meet the increased cost of servicing the national debt and meeting our obligations, established by law, to veterans. These expenditure increases, let me stress, constitute practically all of the increases which have occurred under this administration, the remainder having gone to fight the recession we found in industry--mostly through the supplemental employment bill-and in agriculture. We shall, therefore, neither postpone our tax cut plans nor cut into essential national security programs. This administration is determined to protect America's security and survival and we are also determined to step up its economic growth. I think we must do both.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Law , Hope , Thinking , Fight

“In conclusion, let me emphasize one point: that we are determined, as a nation in 1961 that freedom shall survive and succeed--and whatever the peril and set-backs, we have some very large advantages. The first is the simple fact that we are on the side of liberty--and since the beginning of history, and particularly since the end of the Second World War, liberty has been winning out all over the globe. A second great asset is that we are not alone. We have friends and allies all over the world who share our devotion to freedom. [...] A third asset is our desire for peace. It is sincere, and I believe the world knows it. [...] Yet it is important to know that our patience at the bargaining table is nearly inexhaustible, though our credulity is limited-that our hopes for peace are unfailing, while our determination to protect our security is resolute.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Peace , History , Freedom , War

“For too long, it was taken for granted that we would survive because we were Dutch; because Holland would take care of us. In our ignorant innocence or innocent ignorance we overlooked the fact that they were, and historically are, the rulers and we the ruled ones, and that power never renders itself; it has to be conquered, if not by sword then by the mind. And we neglected the mind. We have not studied our rulers well enough, otherwise we would have known that we were programmed to think that we are not programmed; that if we looked the other way long enough and denied the existence of colonialism it would automatically disappear. We forgot that we were trained not to see colonialism as colonialism.”

Joceline Clemencia (1952–2011) Curaçaoan writer

Source: Language is More Than Language in the Development of Curaçao https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000136432, 1999

Training , Thinking , Study , Way

“There...is the necessity for freedom of speech and the arts. We have to scrutinize all the advances of society to judge whether they are cruel or frustrate cruelty, and for that purpose we must hear the evidence of all persons affected by their operation and of all persons qualified by experience or learning or speculative gifts to form an interesting opinion on what those operations might be. It is therefore necessary that all classes of men should be given the fullest opportunity to express themselves without constraint, not only out of admiration for an abstraction , but as a practical measure toward human survival. It is also necessary that the artist, of whatsoever kind, should be free to anatomize the spirit, so that we can comprehend the battlefield that is this life, and which are the troops of light and which of darkness, and what light may be, and darkness.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

Source: "I Believe", in I Believe : The Personal Philosophies of Certain Eminent Men and Women Of Our Time edited by Clifton Fadiman. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1939.

Freedom , Light , Personality , Learning

“Look at the solar system, and look at the Earth. On Earth, there are many intelligent species, but only one has achieved technology. Right here in the journey of our own solar system, there is a very, very powerful message that says here's how we should look for alien life, small and big. So yeah, microbes are talking and we are listening, and they are taking us, one planet at a time and one moon at a time, towards their big brothers out there. And they are telling us about diversity, they are telling us about abundance of life, and they are telling us how this life has survived thus far to reach civilization, intelligence, technology and, indeed, philosophy.”

Nathalie Cabrol (1963) French American astrobiologist

Source: How Mars might hold the secret to the origin of life https://www.ted.com/talks/nathalie_cabrol_how_mars_might_hold_the_secret_to_the_origin_of_life (March 2015)

Life , Intelligence , Time

“No one knows better than I with forty years' political experience that policy--particularly a revolutionary policy--has its tactical requirements. I recognised the Soviets in 1924. In 1934, I signed with them a treaty of commerce and friendship. I, therefore, understood that, especially as Ribbentrop's forecast about the non-intervention of Britain and France has not come off, you are obliged to avoid the second front [with Russia]. You have had to pay for this in that Russia has, without striking a blow, been the great profiteer of the war in Poland and the Baltic. But I, who was born a revolutionary and have not modified my revolutionary mentality, tell you that you cannot permanently sacrifice the principles of your revolution to the tactical requirements of a given moment... I have also the definite duty to add that a further step in the relations with Moscow would have catastrophic repercussions in Italy, where the unanimity of anti-Bolshevik feeling is absolute, granite-hard, and unbreakable. Permit me to think that this will not happen. The solution of your Lebensraum is in Russia, and nowhere else... The day when we shall have demolished Bolshevism we shall have kept faith with both our revolutions. Then it will be the turn of the great democracies, who will not be able to survive the cancer which gnaws them...”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1930s
Source: Letter to Hitler, quoted in Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm

Democracy , Faith , Friendship , War

“One learns survival by surviving.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“I have an interest in the outsider…In fiction you’re not often writing about the typical, you are interested in outliers, the points of interest. Part of it comes from feeling I was the only Asian or person of colour … another part comes from my personality: I’m an introvert, and my usual survival mode in a large group is to stand by a wall and watch everybody.”

Celeste Ng (1980) American novelist

On her writing interests in “Celeste Ng: ‘It’s a novel about race, and class and privilege’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/04/celeste-ng-interview-little-fires-everywhere in The Guardian (2017 Nov 4)

Personality , Feeling , Parting

“You can’t destroy knowledge. You can stamp it under and burn it up and forbid it to be, but somewhere it will survive.”

Leigh Brackett book The Long Tomorrow

Source: The Long Tomorrow (1955), Chapter 21

Knowledge

“You must kill if you expect to survive.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

"No you don't," Miles put in. "Most people go through their whole lives without killing anybody. False argument.
Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)

“A society that says we are defined exclusively by the bar and the nightclub, by self-indulgence and our sense of entitlement, cannot be said to have deep roots or much likelihood of survival. But a society which holds that our culture consists of the cathedral, the playhouse and the playing field, the shopping mall and Shakespeare, has a chance.”

Douglas Murray book The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam (2017)

Sense , Self-confidence , Chance

“Our understanding of history and the country is shaped by the images the survive.”

Kate Williams (historian) (1974) British historian

https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1356274/memory-lane-personal-memories-pictures-photographs
Your personal Memory Lane is a treasure trove of fantastic memories, says KATE WILLIAMS
The Express
5 November 2020
2 May 2021

Understanding , History , Country

“Without religion − or without authentic religion − a human collectivity cannot survive in the long run; that is, it cannot remain human.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2003, The Play of Masks, World Wisdom, 12, 978-0-94153214-3]
Miscellaneous, Religion

Religion

“No democracy can survive without a thriving middle class and entrepreneurs are our job creators.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Future Proofing You (2021)

Democracy

“We live in a world in which the common denominator that binds the human family together has been reduced to its simplest fundamental term—human survival.”

Walter Reuther (1907–1970) Labor union leader

Address before the special constitutional convention of the United Auto Workers, Detroit, Michigan, January 22, 1958, as quoted in Walter P Reuther: Selected Papers (1961), by Henry M. Christman, p. 214 This is our goal—a world of peace, freedom, and social justice for all people everywhere.

Family , World

“Inter-racial sports destroy the senses of uniqueness and value necessary to racial survival.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Revolution by Number

Sport , Sense

“In an era of a global economy, we can't survive without foreign investment. We must change our attitude toward foreign investment. We should welcome it.”

Kim Dae-jung (1924–2009) South Korean politician

"New S. Korea Leader Warns of Hardship" in The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/kimdaejung/kimdaejung.htm (18 January 1998)

Change

“It's a survival thing, making yourself a small target.”

Tim Winton book The Turning

Short story, 'Big World' - p.10 [Page numbers per the 2006 UK paperback.]
Short stories, The Turning (2004)

“We have survived multiple ice ages, we have knocked down mammoths, we are carriers, we are heirs to the greatest civilization that ever existed.”

Thierry Baudet (1983) Dutch writer and jurist

Baudet's speech: 5 remarkable statements and what they mean. https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/politiek/artikel/4650251/de-speech-van-baudet-forum-voor-democratie-5-opmerkelijke

Age

“My life? Oh, my life I abandon without a regret! I have seen the Past; and I foresee the Future. What friend of his country would wish to survive the moment when he could no longer serve it — when he could no longer defend innocence against oppression?”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Last Speech to the National Convention (26 July 1794)

Country , Past , Future , Life

“The only thing that is certain now is that we must focus all our energies solely on racial survival and allow no peripheral issues like argument over past institutions to divide our energies.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

An Interview by Focus Fourteen with David lane
Focus Fourteen

Past

“As for the methods of survival, feel free to use your divine weapons to defeat the enemy.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Feeling

“Everything' is infinite. Which will be impossible for anyone to know. Human beings only care about methods of survival and nothing else.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The facts are only beneficial for survival in bodily wandering. Apart from that, you are left on your own.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“The truth is infinite. Whatever you know is only useful to your survival and protective to your senses.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Truth , Sense

“It’s just skating, and I’ll survive, but at the same time, it’s hard because I’ve worked so long for this moment. It’s not the way I wanted it to go, but at the same time I’m telling everybody, you can fall and still get up and keep going.”

Mirai Nagasu (1993) American figure skater

After failure in performing a triple axel skating move during a women's short program in "Olympic Figure Skater Mirai Nagasu Gives A Perfect Interview After Falling During Her Short Program" https://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a18559515/olympic-figure-skater-mirai-nagasu-falling-during-triple-axel/ in Elle (February 21, 2018)

Time , Way

“So whatever decision you make, you're going to be able to find stories or signs to say 'I did the right thing,' because we have to believe we did the right thing in order to survive.”

Lulu Wang (1983) Asian-American filmmaker

As quoted in "In 'The Farewell,' The Bad News Bearers Keep A Secret" in WBUR News (13 July 2019) https://www.wbur.org/npr/741217856/in-the-farewell-the-bad-news-bearers-keep-a-secret

Decision

“Well, I suppose we have to have young intellectuals, if we’re ever to survive to be middle-aged philosophers.”

Algis Budrys (1931–2008) American writer

Source: Some Will Not Die (1961), Chapter 5 (p. 84)

Age

“It is not even impossible to imagine that the effects of an atomic war fought with greatly perfected weapons and pushed by the utmost determination will endanger the survival of man.”

Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

How Dangerous Are Atomic Weapons?, 1947

Imagination , War , Perfection

“The urge to control others is very strong, but the desire for freedom and the ability to show compassion will always survive. Darkness is everywhere, but the Light still appears.”

John Twelve Hawks book The Traveler

Source: Fourth Realm Trilogy (2005-2009), The Traveler (2005), Ch. 26

Freedom , Light , Strong , Appearance

“The poor are like foxes: they need intelligence in order to survive. The rich, however, have power; they don’t need good sense.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: Singer from the Sea (1999), Chapter 2, “The Library” (p. 48)

Intelligence , Sense

“Community is life: from it comes our capacity for survival. That is how it was when we lived in caves and so it is today.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), What should survivors tell their children?

Communication , Life

“One of the missions of the underground priests was to encourage these people and to tell them that yes, we're suffering, but we're doing this for Christ. That's why the Church survived; people were humans, in all the best sense of the word.”

Volodymyr Viytyshyn (1959) Polish archbishop

Source: In becoming a priest, you were agreeing to be a martyr https://osvnews.com/2018/08/15/underground-period-marks-ukrainian-church/ (15 August 2018)

People , Suffering , Christ , Sense

“When a man embarks on the warriors' path he becomes aware, in a gradual manner, that ordinary life has been left forever behind. The means of the ordinary world are no longer a buffer for him; and he must adopt a new way of life if he is going to survive.”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from A Separate Reality (Chapter 6)

World , Way , Life

“Well, cheating and surviving go hand in hand.”

Bobby Heenan (1944–2017) American professional wrestler, professional wrestling commentator and manager

Source: World Wrestling Federation (1984-1993), Survivor Series (1993)

Cheating

“[T]hough affluence is a good thing, and the spirit of compassionate reform is a good thing, in the end a nation survives only to the extent that the spirit of self-discipline and self-sacrifice is strong and vital.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

Source: Memorandum to Robert T. Hartmann https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0204/1511691.pdf (1976)

Strong

“A small snake does not make nearby frogs, chickens and ducks feel threatened. But when it grows to be a python, even nearby pigs, oxen, horses and goats feel a threat to their survival.”

Feng Shih-kuan (1945) Taiwanese politician

Feng Shih-kuan (2017) cited in " Once formidable, Taiwan’s military now overshadowed by China’s https://www.todayonline.com/world/once-formidable-taiwans-military-now-overshadowed-chinas" on Today Online, 4 November 2017.

Horse , Feeling

“Comedy is a weird but very beautiful thing. Even though it seems foolish and silly and crazy, comedy has the most to say about the human condition. Because if you can laugh, you can get by. You can survive when things are bad when you have a sense of humor.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

Source: All About Me (New York: Ballantine Books, 2021), p. 451

Sense , Beauty

“It was a good plan, and like all plans since the dawn of time, this would fail to survive contact with real life.”

Ben Aaronovitch book Whispers Under Ground

Source: Whispers Under Ground (2012), Chapter 25, “Ladbroke Grove” (p. 262)

Time , Life

“It is not in the interest of the virus to kill the host because it (the virus) will die as well. Through their evolutionary process, viruses tend to accommodate the hosts to live in them. This means they want to cause mild diseases to propagate and that will ensure they can survive.”

Sazaly Abu Bakar researcher

Source: Sazaly Abu Bakar (2020) cited in " 'More studies needed on virus mutations' https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2020/03/572140/more-studies-needed-virus-mutations" on New Straits Times, 6 March 2020.

Disease

“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... It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry.”

Buckminster Fuller book Critical Path

Source: From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

Selfishness

“Consider all that you've gone through, all that you've survived. And that the story of your life is done, your assignment complete. How many good things have you seen? How much pain and pleasure have you resisted? How many honors have you declined? How many unkind people have you been kind to?”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Hays translation
Source: Meditations (c. AD 121–180), Book V, 31

Pain , People , Pleasure , Life

“It seems to me that an age of belief sowed the good seed of which an age of unbelief, an age at least of less fervent belief, reaps the fruits. It strikes me that the moral precepts and moral influences of Christianity needed the dogmatic teaching and the systematic discipline of past times to gain for them a hold in the world. The sower may sometimes have sowed tares along with his wheat, but the wheat has survived the tares. I believe that many a man who has little faith in Christian theology is deeply influenced by Christian morality, and that he is altogether a different man from what he would have been had Christianity never been.”

Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–1892) English historian (1823-1892)

Source: 'The Morality of Field Sports', The Fortnightly Review (October 1869), quoted in E. A. Freeman, The Morality of Field Sports (1874), p. 12

Age , World , Time , Faith

“Just being alive
It can really hurt
These moments given
Are a gift from time.

Just let us try
To give these moments back
To those we love
To those who will survive...”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Source: Song lyrics, The Red Shoes (1993)

Hurt , Love , Time

“Cowardice is a far better survival trait than heroism.”

Jim C. Hines (1974) American writer

Source: The Goblin Quest Series, Goblin War (2008), Chapter 13 (p. 254)

“No plan survives the first encounter with your enemy, so why bother to make one?”

Jim C. Hines (1974) American writer

Source: The Goblin Quest Series, Goblin Hero (2007), Chapter 13 (p. 243)

“Writing music for me is easy, and is less stressful than a nine-to-five job. What I find hard is going to meetings and dealing with lawyers. The Hollywood lifestyle is hectic and often you have to survive on just four hours sleep before starting again.”

Lorne Balfe (1976) British composer

Source: Composing a career of note in LA https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/composing-career-note-la-2453112 (9 July 2002)

Sleep , Music

“Happy species endowed with infinite appreciation of pleasures and low sensitivity to pain would probably not survive the evolutionary battle.”

Amos Tversky (1937–1996) Israeli psychologist

attributed, but source not available.

Pain , Happiness , Pleasure

“Survival comes first, truth, understanding, and science later.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Skin in the Game

Source: Skin in the Game (2018), p. 214

Truth , Understanding , Science

“Power is habit-forming. We grew addicted to it. Few things survive the centuries’ slow decay: senses grow dull; passions grow weak; and ideals die. Only the taste for power lives on as an excuse for survival.”

Jack Williamson book Star Bridge

Source: Star Bridge (1955), Chapter 20, “Prime Mover” (p. 275)

Passion , Sense

“It is time that we squarely face the fact that institutional schoolteaching is destructive to children. Nobody survives the seven-lesson curriculum completely unscathed, not even the instructors.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 17

Children , Time

“The great disease of mankind is ignorance.
With knowledge you can grasp tight a belief: that you can be better, that the world can be better. With that, you can claim hope.
Hope is the eternal tool in the survival kit for mankind. We hope for a little luck, we hope for a better tomorrow, we hope — although it is an impossible hope — to somehow get out of this world alive.
And if we can't and don't, then it is enough to rejoice in our short time here and to remember how much we loved the view.”

Sidney Poitier (1927) American-born Bahamian actor, film director, author, and diplomat

Source: Life Beyond Measure (2008), twenty-third letter — The World I Leave You, p. 273

World , Disease , Time , Hope

“Not giving importance to the misconduct of many people: is not selfishness, but an act of survival.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Non dare importanza al comportamento scorretto di molte persone: non è egoismo, ma un atto di sopravvivenza.
Source: prevale.net

Selfishness , People

“Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.”

Louise Glück The Wild Iris

Source: "The Wild Iris" 1992

Sun

“The poem will not survive on content but through voice. By voice I mean the style of thought, for which a style of speech never convincingly substitutes.”

Louise Glück (1943–2023) American poet

Source: As quoted in "Poet Laureate: Louise Glück and the Public Face of a Private Artist" https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/04/opinion/editorial-observer-poet-laureate-louise-gluck-public-face-private-artist.html by Andrew Johnston, The New York Times (November 4, 2003)

“The entire world is worthless excepting five things: to eat for survival, to take water in order to slake thirst, clothes to cover body, house to dwell in, knowledge just to act upon.”

Sari al-Saqati (772–867) Iraqi sufi

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam, p. 43

Housing , Water , World , Clothes

“I believe that all the trials and challenges that God gives us are meant to make us stronger and to lead us to a better path in life. There are things that we can't control. We just have to accept them and do our best to survive and surpass the difficulties.”

Hidilyn Diaz (1991) Filipino Olympic weightlifter, Philippines' first Olympic Gold Medalist

Source: Olympian Hidilyn Diaz Talks About Rock Bottom And Her Battle To Win The Gold https://www.tatlerasia.com/the-scene/people-parties/olympian-hidilyn-diaz-talks-about-her-rock-bottom-and-her-battle-to-the-top (23 July 2020)

God , Life

“Honor in safety, survival under threat. Necessity is the only law.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Stone Sky

Source: The Stone Sky (2017), Chapter 9 “the desert, briefly, and you” (p. 231)

Law

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

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

undated

Color

“The growth of civilisation is measured by refinements of living and increasing distance from the immediacies of survival.”

A. C. Grayling (1949) English philosopher

Source: Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002), Chapter 13, “Sex” (p. 49)

“There is a lot of pressure on the players in the Chinese team. I wouldn’t have survived if I had stayed there. Right now, I have the freedom to choose which tournaments to play and where to train. I take decisions that suit me.”

Beiwen Zhang (1990) badminton player

"Well-travelled Beiwen Zhang plays on her own terms" in The Indian Express https://indianexpress.com/article/sports/badminton/well-travelled-beiwen-zhang-plays-on-her-own-terms-5046843/ (1 February 2018)

Freedom , Training , Decision

“Each [pelican] has already survived many perils in its young life. As a chick, it fought battles with its brothers and sisters and won.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

"The Problems of Parenthood"
The Life of Birds (1998)

Life , Sister

“We must recognize today that it is normal for the wealthiest to be the greatest thieves. When a poor man steals it is merely a theft, a petty crime -- it is solely about survival and necessity. The rich are the ones who steal from the treasury, customs duties, and who exploit the people.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

From a speech given to the Organization of African Unity on 29 July 1987 https://www.marxists.org/archive/sankara/1987/july/29.htm

People

“Political and ideological unity must be reinforced by organisational unity. Without it, political and ideological unity loses any practical meaning and cannot survive.”

Kaysone Phomvihane (1920–1992) first General Secretary of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (1955-1992)

Revolution in Laos: Practice and Prospects (1981) (excerpts)

“It’s amazing what superstitions survive in fearful minds.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 10, “Werteswandel” (p. 462)

Fear

“To survive, our American art was cheating itself of life.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

A Testament (1957)

Art , Life , Cheating

“By the time we married, I realized I could survive without him, and he realized he didn’t want to survive without me. I liked that. That’s a good attitude to enter a marriage with.”

Kathryn Crosby (1933) American actress

Kathryn Crosby Interview: On Life with Bing Crosby and PBS' "American Masters" Documentary Featuring the Entertainment Icon's Career https://smashinginterviews.com/interviews/actors/kathryn-crosby-interview-on-life-with-bing-crosby-and-pbs-american-masters-documentary-featuring-the-entertainment-icons-career (1 December 2014)

Time , Marriage

“In this world, to survive you have to be a strong, courageous woman, a woman who overcomes difficulties by turning them into successes. A woman with dedication, intuition, costancy, honor, loyalty and sweetness. A woman not for everyone, but only for those who dare to have her by her side.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: In questo mondo, per sopravvivere devi essere una donna forte, coraggiosa, una donna che supera le difficoltà trasformandole in successi. Una donna con dedizione, intuizione, costanza, onore, lealtà e dolcezza. Una donna non per tutti, ma solo per chi osa averla al suo fianco.
Source: prevale.net

Strong , World , Loyalty , Courage