Quotes about survival
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“Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

"Gzowski on FM".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

Courageous, People

“Marry an outdoors woman. That way, if you have to throw her out into the yard for the night, she can still survive.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Way, Night

“A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Source: The Exploration of Space

Truth, Faith

“Every couple needs to argue now and then. Just to prove that the relationship is strong enough to survive. Long-term relationships, the ones that matter, are all about weathering the peaks and the valleys.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

For Wife, Relationship, Strong, Weather

“We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

“Trauma is survivable, but often not much more. It kills you while allowing you to still live.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

“Somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

Time

“I have learned the power of surviving.”

Philippa Gregory book The Boleyn Inheritance

Source: The Boleyn Inheritance

Learning

“Oh, that I do know… Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Thinking

“In what will survive me
I am in harmony
with my annihilation.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

“We’d turn our lives into a terrible adventure. A true-life horror story with a happy ending. A trial we’d survive to talk about.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

Life, Happiness

“There is such a thing as too much beauty in a woman and it is often a burden as crippling as homeliness and far more dangerous. It takes much luck and integrity to survive the gift of perfect beauty, and its impermanence is its most cunning betrayal.”

Pat Conroy book The Prince of Tides

Source: The Prince of Tides

Beauty, Betrayal, Perfection

“Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive.”

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

1961, Address to ANPA
Context: Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment — the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution- -not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it wants" — but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.
This means greater coverage and analysis of international news — for it is no longer far away and foreign but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved transmission. And it means, finally, that government at all levels, must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside the narrowest limits of national security — and we intend to do it.

Country

“If i'm going to survive, it won't be because i have a lion-skin cloak. I'm not Hercules.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

“You're the last Olympian,' I said. 'And the most important.'
And why is that, Percy Jackson?'
Because Hope survives best at the hearth,' I said.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Hope

“You might have lost some major battles, but you survived and you're still here.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

“By understanding the nuances of the world around you and how to survive the temptations, you can rule anything. Even yourself”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

World, Understanding

“Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Parting

“I saw his scars - the visible ones-and saw how breaking him had not made him any less beautiful. If anything, he stood stronger, because he'd survived.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Invisibility

Beauty

“People don't need wings to survive"
"Mockingjays do.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

People

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”

B.F. Skinner (1904–1990) American behaviorist

"New methods and new aims in teaching", in New Scientist, 22(392) (21 May 1964), pp.483-4.

Education, Learning

“If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive?… Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be punished for being good. One can't be penalized for ability.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“As time goes by, as time goes by, the whip-crack of the years, the precipice of illusions, the ravine that swallows up all human endeavour except the struggle to survive.”

Roberto Bolaño book By Night in Chile

Source: By Night in Chile

Time

“You are going to survive. And good things are going to start to happen again. And one day you are going to look back and this will not even be such a bad thing”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

“High school wasn't a trial by fire or some ordeal that had to be survived. It was all a big joke. You just had to provide the laugh track.”

Scott Westerfeld (1963) American science fiction writer

Source: Midnighters Manga #1

School

“Our world is fast succumbing to the activities of men and women who would stake the future of our species on beliefs that should not survive an elementary school education.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Source: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Women, Men, World, Education

“Sometimes the worst thing that happens to you, the thing you think you can't survive… it's the thing that makes you better than you used to be.”

Jennifer Weiner (1970) American writer

Source: Fly Away Home

Thinking

“That's the trouble with survival of the fittest, isn't it, Dominick? The corpse at your feet. That little inconvenience.”

Wally Lamb book I Know This Much Is True

Source: I Know This Much Is True

“Survive first. Figure out crayon drawing of destiny later.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Variant: Survive today. Figure out crayon drawing of destiny later.
Source: The Lost Hero

Drawing

“Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn’t grow out of either of our species’ two basic instincts: survival and reproduction.”

Scott McCloud (1960) American cartoonist

Source: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

Art

“Sometimes I think high school is one long hazy activity: if you are tough enough to survive this, they'll let you become an adult. I hope it's worth it.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

School, Hope, Thinking

“We survived. You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Perfection

“What if the puzzle of the world was a shape you didn't fit into? And the only way to survive was to mutilate yourself, carve away your corners, sand yourself down, modify yourself to fit? How come we haven't been able to change the puzzle instead?”

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

World, Way, Change

“I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or fears?”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Fear, Way, Soul, Memory

“Love is the only engine of survival”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Love

“If I could grow wings, I could fly. Only people can't grow wings," he say's. "Real or not real?"
"Real," I say. "But people don't need wings to survive."
"Mockingjays do.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

People, Flying

“Laughter, like love, has power to survive the worst things life has to offer. And to do it with style.”

Jim Butcher book Blood Rites

Source: Blood Rites

Love, Life, Laughter

“The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Essex's Device (1595)

“You can survive on your own; you can grow strong on your own; you can prevail on your own; but you cannot become human on your own.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Source: The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days (1982)

Strong

“How do you go on knowing that you will never again - not ever, ever - see the person you have loved? How do you survive a single hour, a single minute, a single second of that knowledge? How do you hold yourself together?”

Howard Jacobson book The Finkler Question

Source: The Finkler Question

Love, Knowledge, Personality

“It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Imagination

“To survive, you must tell stories.”

Umberto Eco book The Island of the Day Before

The Island of the Day Before

“We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.”

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

Thinking

“You're not half the male you could be because of what was done to you. You're twice what anyone else is because you survived.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Mine

“Sometimes, Ms. Lane,” he said, “one must break with one’s past to embrace one’s future. It is never
an easy thing to do. It is one of the distinguishing characteristics between survivors and victims.
Letting go of what was, to survive what is.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Variant: Sometimes, Ms. Lane," he said, "one must break with one's past to embrace one's future. It is never an easy thing to do. It is one of the distinguishing characteristics between survivors and victims. Letting go of what was, to survive what is.
Source: Darkfever

Past, Future

“We were creating a world where the smartest way to survive is to be bland.”

Jon Ronson book So You've Been Publicly Shamed

Source: So You've Been Publicly Shamed

World, Way

“In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002)

Life

“He hesitated, remembering something Finnikin had said to him on their journey. That somehow, even in the worst of times, the tiniest fragments of good survive. It was the grip in which one held those fragments that counted.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

Time

“We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being.”

Atul Gawande (1965) American surgeon

Source: Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End

Health, Thinking

“When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Life, Hunger, Sense, Selfishness

“You like someone who can’t like you back because unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Love, Way

“Scars speak for you. They say you're strong, and you've survived something that might have killed others.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: A Mad Zombie Party

Strong

“Even in its darkest passages, the heart is unconquerable. It is important that the body survives, but it is more meaningful that the human spirit prevails.”

Dave Pelzer (1960) American author

Source: A Child Called "It"

Heart

“The grass as bristly and stout as chives and me wondering when the ground will break and me wondering how anything fragile survives”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Grass

“I'll survive. I've done it before.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Sweet Temptation

“Don't feel insecure just because you lost!! We are Fairy Tail! We're from the guild that doesn't know when to stop! We won't survive unless we keep running!”

Hiro Mashima (1977) Japanese manga artist

Feeling

“Scars are the paler pain of survival received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Pain

“It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

Source: Hyperion

Dependency

“How vast was a human being's capacity for suffering. The only thing you could do was stand in awe of it. It wasn't a question of survival at all. It was the fullness of it, how much could you hold, how much could you care.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Question, Suffering

“Not everything made you stronger. It was possible to survive, yet still be crippled for your trouble. Sometimes it was okay to run away, to skip the test, to chicken out. Or at least to get some help.”

Scott Westerfeld (1963) American science fiction writer

Help

“If a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, then a family is more like a rope. We're lots of fragile little strands, and we survive by becoming hopelessly intertwined with each other.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Saga, Vol. 7

Family, Strong

“The woman who survives intact and happy must be at once tender and tough.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Happiness

“Some of your hurts you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived,
But what torments of grief you endured
From evils which never arrived!”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Borrowing From the French http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=20649&c=323 <br class="br">1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

Evil, Hurt

“All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Way, Parting, Madness

“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.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Life, Death

“i still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line…”

Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) Japanese author

Way

“To be good or bad doesn't count: life out in this world doesn't depend on that. It depends on a relation of forces based on violence. And survival is violence. You'll wear leather shoes because someone has killed a cow and skinned it to make leather.”

Oriana Fallaci book Letter to a Child Never Born

Source: Letter to a Child Never Born

Life, World, Shoe, Dependency

“Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't the will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never cease to exist.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Nature

“Beautiful women rarely possess sufficient depth of character to survive without their pretty feathers.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

Women, Beauty

“Yet somehow the thing that startled me most, after a week or two had passed, was that I had in fact survived.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

“A young wolfhound must meet his first wolf someday, but if the wolf sees him as a puppy, if he acts the puppy, the wolf will surely kill him. The wolfhound must be a wolfhound in the wolf's eyes even more than in his own, if he is to survive.”

Robert Jordan The Great Hunt

Source: The Great Hunt

Wolf

“Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

Life, Childhood

“… A scar signifies past pain, a wound that did not heal as it ought. But it testifies, too, to survival…(Here be Dragons)”

Sharon Kay Penman (1945) American historical novelist

Pain, Past

“It's important to know the past, but your survival depends on knowing the present.”

Jonathan Maberry book Dust & Decay

Source: Dust & Decay

Past, Dependency

“But whathappened? The answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Lovers

“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Intelligence

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Education

“There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

Question, Past

“Trust others to do the right thing. If you can't do that, trust yourself to survive what happens.”

Susan Mallery (1950) American author

“We’ll never survive!”
“Nonsense. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

“We all have choices. (Astrid)
No we don’t, princess. Only people with money and influence have choices. For the rest of us, basic necessity dictates what we have to do to survive. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Money, People, Princess

“No book, however good, can survive a hostile reading.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Hostility, Books, Reading

“Armenia is dying, but it will survive. The little blood that is left is precious blood that will give birth to a heroic generation. A nation that does not want to die, does not die. April 9, 1916 Sorbonne”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Birth

“Whoever doesn't live in poetry cannot survive here on earth.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Source: Under the Glacier

“Akkarin: I watched the first woman I loved die. I dont think I can survive losing the second.
Sonea: I love you too.”

Trudi Canavan book The High Lord

Source: The High Lord

Love, Thinking

“When you can't bear something but it goes on anyway, the person who survives isn't you anymore; you've changed and become someone else, a new person, the one who did bear it after all.”

Austin Grossman (1969) American writer and game designer

Change, Personality

“A lot of life is just surviving what happens.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Six Rules of Maybe

Life

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Life, Health, Chance

“The hero surviving his own murder, his own suicide, his own addiction, surviving his own disappearance from the scene”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Source: The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971

Suicide

“Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention… the capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”

Julia Cameron book The Artist's Way

Source: The Artist's Way

“In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, how could one judge those people who decide to die? No one can judge. Each person knows the extent of their own suffering or the total absence of meaning in their lives.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

People, World, Suffering, Personality

“Rabbits live close to death and when death comes closer than usual, thinking about survival leaves little room for anything else.”

Richard Adams book Watership Down

Source: Watership Down

Death, Thinking

“He knew these last lines by heart and mouthed them now in the darkness. My reason for life. Not living, but life. That was the touch. And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Life, Heart

“There are no rules in survival.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Heart of Betrayal

“I believe in our side and theirs, with the good and evil decided after the fact, by those who survive. Among men you seldom find the good with one standard and the shadow with another.”

Glen Cook book Shadows Linger

Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 33, “Juniper: The Encounter” (p. 367)
Context: I do not believe in evil absolute. I have recounted that philosophy in specific in the Annals, and it affects my every observation throughout my tenure as Annalist. I believe in our side and theirs, with the good and evil decided after the fact, by those who survive. Among men you seldom find the good with one standard and the shadow with another.

Men, Evil

“If so, then it was also here where I came to know I can survive what hurts. I believed in my capacity to stand back up and run into the waves again and again, no matter the risk.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Hurt