Survival Quotes

Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.

~ Yann Martel

The weak fall, but the strong will remain and never go under!

~ Anne Frank

I remembered my little brother, Allyn, had appeared so innocent and angelic when he slept--similar to Kerrick. It must be a survival tactic. If Allyn hadn't looked so sweet, we would have killed him while he slept. He had been pure evil when he was awake--similar to Kerrick.

~ Maria V. Snyder

Don't play his game. Play yours.

~ Rachel Caine

Scars are not signs of weakness, they are signs of survival and endurance.

~ Rodney A. Winters

Anyone worth knowing breaks once. Once. No shame, no foul if you survive it. You did.

~ Karen Marie Moning

You know, I once read an interesting book which said that, uh, most people lost in the wilds, they, they die of shame. Yeah, see, they die of shame. 'What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?' And so they sit there and they... die. Because they didn't do the one thing that would save their lives. Thinking.

~ David Mamet

On the girl’s brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars a s beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, ‘I survived’.In a few breaths’ time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them as we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means the storyteller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvellous, and then she will turn round and smile.

~ Chris Cleave

My own survival required me to counterbalance interesting with invisible.

~ Rachel Hartman

The one thing I can tell you is that you wont survive for yourself. I know because I would never have come this far. A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm with your body. As for me my only hope is for eternal nothingness and I hope it with all my heart.

~ Cormac Mccarthy

We're all put to the test... but it never comes in the form or at the point we would prefer, does it?

~ David Mamet

It is true that all of us are the beneficiaries of crimes committed by our ancestors, and it is true that nothing can be done about that now because the victims are dead and the survivors are innocent. These are good reasons for keeping our mouths shut about the past: but tell me, what are our reasons for silence about atrocities still to come?

~ Damon Knight

One might accept death reasoningly, with every aspect of the conscious mind, but the body was a brute beast that knew nothing of reason.

~ Isaac Asimov

Bad things can happen, and often do--but they only take up a few pages of your story; and anyone can survive a few pages.

~ James A. Owen

See, they say it’s ‘survival of the fittest’, but you and I really know that it’s ‘survival of the most heavily armed

~ Lia Habel

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.

~ Charles Dickens

I wept like a child. It was not because I was overcome at having survived my ordeal, though I was. Nor was it the presence of my brothers and sisters, though that too was very moving. I was weeping because ....fill in the blank with whatever/whoever helped you survive... had left me so unceremoniously.

~ Yann Martel

And Adam ruled, for he was the King. Until the day his will to be King deserted him. Then he died, food for a stronger. And the strongest was always the King, not by strength alone, but King by cunning and luck and strength together. Among the rats.

~ James Clavell

Don't worry. You're safe now. You've got nothing left to steal.

~ Joan D. Vinge

For the first time in his existence, he knew he was drowning and he wasn't thinking about survival.

~ Christine Feehan

They want us dead,' said Bond calmly. 'So we have to stay alive.

~ Ian Fleming

We all have our personal Andes.

~ Nando Parrado

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without vicory there is no survival.

~ Winston S. Churchill

Clinging to any form of conservatism can be dangerous. Become too conservative and you are unprepared for surprises. You cannot depend on luck. Logic is blind and often knows only its own past. Logic is good for playing chess but is often too slow for the needs of survival.

~ Frank Herbert

A foraging wild creature, intent above all upon survival, is as strong as the grass.

~ Richard Adams

Like every living thing its prime characteristic is a blind, unreasoned instinct to survive.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

DID is about survival! As more people begin to appreciate this concept, individuals with DID will start to feel less as though they have to hide in shame. DID develops as a response to extreme trauma that occurs at an early age and usually over an extended period of time.

~ Deborah Bray Haddock

Lina couldn't sleep at first, thinking of the old songs and what they meant. Someone, long ago, had hoped that at least a few people would survive and had wanted them to remember her city and the treasure it held, the treasure that was most valuable of all - herself, her family, and all of the generations of people who had lived in that secret place, their purpose, though they didn't know it, to make sure that human beings did not vanish from the world, no matter what happened above.

~ Jeanne Duprau

If your friend really cared about you he wouldn't let you take such risks.

~ Carrie Ryan

Such beauty, he thought, was too perfect to have come about by mere chance. That day in the center of the Pacific was, to him, a gift crafted deliberately, compassionately, for him and Phil. Joyful and grateful in the midst of slow dying, the two men bathed in that day until sunset brought is, and their time in the doldrums, to an end.

~ Laura Hillenbrand

Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society.

~ Cody Lundin

Survival feels like cowardice.

~ Ann Aguirre

She had never really listened to anyone in her life; which, some said, was why she had survived.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Don't just survive while waiting for someone's revolution to clear your head.

~ Hakim Bey

In the morning she found pieces of a birdchopped and scattered by the fanblood sprayed onto the mosquito net,its body leaving paths on the wallslike red snails that drifted down in lumps.She could imagine the featherswhile she had sleptfalling around herlike slow rain.

~ Michael Ondaatje

The historic beauty of BJJ rests not with its ability to allow a smaller man to maim a larger man, but with its ability to allow any man of any size to survive.

~ Cameron Conaway

I have no language to paint the horrors of our situation. To shed tears was indeed altogether unavailing and withal unmanly yet I was not able to deny myself the relief they served to afford me.

~ Owen Chase

How should a Jew feel? There we went through the seven gates of hell for matzos. Here I stand in matzos over my head. So how should a Jew feel? You are an angel of God, and the Rebbe, he should live and be well, the Rebbe made miracles and wonders for me. At night, I tell myself it is a dream and I am afraid to wake up. If it is a dream, better I should not wake up, better I should die in my sleep.

~ Chaim Potok

The eye is always half-full.

~ Arthur Slade

I come from a plane that fell into the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for ten days. I have a friend up here who is injured. In the plane there is fourteen injured people. We have to get of here quickly and we don't have any food. We are weak. When are you going to come and fetch us? Please. We can't even walk. Where are we?

~ Nando Parrado