Survival Quotes

Running was not always the coward's route; it was a matter of survival. The fewer violent encounters one invited, the longer the life.

~ Marjorie M. Liu

Every few days the sea delivers us gifts, and I am convinced that there is something of the divine nature in this process. Often I have prayed for a jacket, a bucket, or a handsaw, but instead I find one single flip-flop. Many times it has left my heart bitter, but then I find some useful purpose for my found treasure. Maybe the sea doesn’t give me what I want, but what I need.

~ Jennifer Arnett

Behold those times re-created bythe brutal power of sunlit images,the light of life’s tragedy.The walls of the trial, the fieldof the firing squad; and the distantghost of Rome’s suburbs in a ring,gleaming white in naked light.Gunshots: our death, our survival.

~ Pier Paolo Pasolini

This island is a hard place to survive and I fear that it has made everything resistant to the cruel hand of death.

~ Jennifer Arnett

We don’t vanish without a trace. We are not like animals, content with burrows in the ground. We are not very skilled at survival without clothing or tools. Our feet are soft, our skin is easily cooled, and our stomachs are too weak to drink water straight from a stream. We must create in order to survive. We build cities, aqueducts, and shields, for we must in order to have an edge over the beasts of the field. And so, wherever humans have tread their covered feet, their path never vanishes without a trace.

~ Jennifer Arnett

The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least, toeven the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down.

~ Stephen Crane

I can survive either love or insanity. But not both. And you bring me both.

~ Vazaki Nada

So does anyone have a good survival strategy, or is there no hope for getting out of this nightmare?’ asks the Colonel.‘We came up with a big, fat zero. I don’t know how we’re going to survive the blood hunt,’ says Dee.‘That wasn’t the nightmare I was referring to,’ says the Colonel. ‘Death by stupid comments is what I was talking about.

~ Susan Ee

I watch the beautiful performance with an ache in my chest.Then, just when I can’t stand the sadness anymore, a dancer floats out from the side of the stage. A dancer in ragged clothes, filthy and half starved. He’s not even in ballet shoes. He’s just barefoot as he glides out to take his place in the dance.The other dancers turn to him, and it’s clear that he is one of them. One of the lost ones. By the look on their faces, they weren’t expecting him. This is not part of the practiced show. He must have seen them onstage and joined in.Amazingly, the dance continues without a missed beat. The newcomer simply glides into place, and the final dancer who should have danced solo with her missing partner dances with the newcomer.It is full of joy, and the ballerina actually laughs. Her voice is clear and high, and it lifts us all.

~ Susan Ee

People open bookstores because they want their souls back.(from Two Women published in Do Me: Tales of Sex & Love from Tin House)

~ Elizabeth Tallent

If I’m super lucky, I might be able to fight him off and maybe even the warrior after him, but it’s not a long-term survival strategy. By long-term, I mean the next ten minutes.We’re screwed.

~ Susan Ee

Sir, we have a saying in our country: ‘There’s no government, like no government.

~ James Wesley

Keeping secrets is a survival tactic.

~ Kaede Lazares

Politicians are a higher breed of men. They know that this world is ruthless and that they must live accordingly to cope with it

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

A politician is a man in his natural state

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

If you survive, you've got to live with the guilt, and that's more difficult than looking someone in the eye and pulling the trigger. Trust me. I've done both.

~ Sara Grant

Now right here, where the borders of South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya all come together, there’s a patch of land, perhaps 14 or 15 thousand square kilometers—about the size of Montenegro—that is contested. This is just some unpopulated marginal cattle grazing country that is a hot soggy sponge in the rainy season and then a scorching hot griddle in the dry season. There are just a few villages, and most of those are just seasonally occupied.

~ James Wesley

The Lord made what was once the desolation of the Palestine Mandate fertile again, as modern-day Israel, and if He so wills it, He will do the same for the Ilemi Triangle, for his own glory. The desert will bloom.

~ James Wesley

BirthLonely entering in to the new world with a small seed of LOVE,Somewhere in the depth of the HEART.SurvivalStruggling with every step in all aspects and creating a lot of MEMORIESto achieve our amazing GOALS and to get recognized.DeathAt the demise, where we pass away from this SPLENDID world like a treeof LOVE in the entire HEART. It’s all about, designing a seed of love beautifully in to a tree of love before we pass away.LIFE

~ Yash

I know I tackled something big, new, and scary and I survived.

~ Jen Calonita

All of the wars in the world are fueled by power struggles either at individual, national or international levels

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

They only let us live in millions for the sake of the economy. I don't know what will happen by the time they figure out how to run the economy without the people

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Being able to endure is sometimes the key to survival.

~ Eraldo Banovac

I chased my prey…there was blood oozing out from the pain of the weaker… my incisors tasted the deliciousness of flesh! Lying down under the shade of age-old tree I knew- you are nothing but the contentment of the deliciousness - the very meaning of mortal life! It was when I myself became the prey of hunger, seeing my own flesh bleeding from the mouth of my successor, I knew, you were more than that what I knew in my senses, my hunger!

~ Preeth Nambiar

Do you know what it means to be a survivor? It means that not only do you have to live through things, you have to live with them as well. The second part is much harder and sometimes it takes the rest of your life to learn how to do it. But at least you have the rest of your life…

~ Josephine Angelini

I knew what happened in fairy tales. The strong survived while the weak were eaten alive.

~ Alice Hoffman

We were all survivors—every last one of us who limped our way out to the sidewalks that afternoon and spit in Death’s cold face.

~ Cat Winters

Nobody wants to admit that mermaids who survive the dangers of the ocean can still be defeated by their own pain. He links his fingers through mine. He squeezes my hand until I look back. A mermaid's heart is the most fragile thing in the sea. You've somehow managed to keep yours beating. The shield doesn't matter. What matters is you're a survivor.

~ Emm Cole

But for the overcrowded, for those who have little or nothing except, sometimes, courage and love, hope works differently. Hope is then something to bite on, to put between the teeth. Don't forget this. Be a realist. With hope between the teeth comes the strength to carry on even when fatigue never lets up, comes strength, when necessary, to choose not to shout at the wrong moment, comes the strength above all not to howl. A person, with hope between her or his teeth, is a brother or sister who commands respect.

~ John Berger

It is actually a good survival strategy to manipulate twist, and reorganize the truth in a way that is more consistent with what we can psychologically tolerate.

~ Cortney S. Warren

Be the cockroach

~ Amber Kizer

Survival is the foundation of endurance, complete triumph is the endgame.

~ Bohdi Sanders

Therefore, men of Polynesia and Boston and China and Mount Fuji and the barrios of the Philippines, do not come to these islands empty-handed, or craven in spirit, or afraid to starve. There is no food here. In these islands there is no certainty. Bring your own food, your own gods, your own flowers and fruits and concepts. For if you come without resources to these islands you will perish... On these harsh terms the islands waited.

~ James A. Michener

The dangers that we face are part of the process, now well underway, of the unification of the planet--in language, culture, science, and commerce. They are both driven by the identical technological advances--this critical and delicate time coincides with the widespread availability of nuclear weapons. At the present rate of change, it seems likely that in the period between now and 2061, the turning point for the human species will have been reached.If we survive until then, our passage to the next apparition of Halley's Comet should be comparatively easy. That perihelion passage will be in March 2134, when the comet will make an unusually close encounter with the Earth. It will come as close as 0.09AU or 14 million kilometers, less than half the distance of the 1910 encounter. It will then be brighter than the brightest star. If there are those to do the commemorating, the years 2061 and 2134 should be celebrated for the courage, intelligence, and common purpose of a species forced by urgent necessity to come to its senses.

~ Carl Sagan

Because you never know when the day before ... Is the day before. Prepare for tomorrow.

~ Bobby Akart

Eight months in the woods have hardened me, or at least firmed up my beliefs that if a man’s going to fend for himself, then he needs to leave his credit card at home.

~ Fennel Hudson

Can anyone survive without faith, however its labeled? No matter how you live, it seems, you need faith to get by, to get ahead.

~ Deborah Feldman

Fight back, Laia. For Darin. For Izzi. For every Scholar this beast has abused. Fight. A scream bursts from me, and I claw at Marcus’s face, but a punch to my stomach takes the wind out of my lungs. I double over, retching, and his knee comer up into my forehead. The hallway spins, and I drop to my knees. Then I hear him laughting, a sadistic chuckle that stokes my defiance.Sluggishly, I throw myself at his legs. It won’t be like before, like during the raid when I let that Mask drag me about my own house like some dead thing.This time, I’ll fight. Tooth and nail, I’ll fight.

~ Sabaa Tahir

Trust yourself. You’ve survived a lot, and you’ll survive whatever is coming.

~ Robert Tew

Unlike its human counterparts, an army of zombies is completely independent of support. It will not require food,ammunition, or medical attention. It will not succumb to panic, desertion, or out-and-out mutiny. Like the virus that gave it life, this undead force will continue to grow, spreading across the body of this planet until there is nothing left to devour. Where would you go? What would you do?

~ Max Brooks