Survival Quotes - Page 6

• Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.

  John le Carre

  Infinite, Capacity, Suspicion

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• The passage of time eliminates some of the more intimate details of one's existence. The routine trivia like passing water and shitting and the amount of food and alcohol consumed in the course of daily survival. Sure, there were girls. Lots of'em. It's inevitable.

  Ray Davies

  Life, Girl, Water

  Ray Davies (2007). “X-Ray: The Unauthorized Autobiography”, p.92, The Overlook Press

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• Acting is a reflex, a mechanism for development and survival. . . . It isn't 'second nature,' it is 'first nature.'

  Declan Donnellan

  Acting, Development, Firsts

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• I think comedy is so much easier to do on the page than it is in real life. When I'm writing, comedy is an easy way to win over the reader. You're automatically more disposed to keep reading, thinking maybe, "I'll get another laugh or two." I think it's a survival instinct in me. I mean, you don't want to lose these guys within five or ten pages. You want them to keep going. I think to some extent it's a desperate measure that I throw out there, because a novel isn't a complete waste of time if it made you laugh.

  Joshua Ferris

  Real, Reading, Mean

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• [Aldous Huxley] compared the brain to a 'reducing valve'. In ordinary perception, the senses send an overwhelming flood of information to the brain, which the brain then filters down to a trickle it can manage for the purpose of survival in a highly competitive world. Man has become so rational, so utilitarian, that the trickle becomes most pale and thin. It is efficient, for mere survival, but it screens out the most wondrous part of man's potential experience without his even knowing it. We're shut off from our own world.

  Tom Wolfe

  Men, Knowing, Perception

  Tom Wolfe (1999). “The electric kool-aid acid test”, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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• It is true that the sky was always beautiful but I don't remember marvelling at sunset or gazing at the dawn of a new day. Survival does not allow time for poetic reflection.

  Izzeldin Abuelaish

  Beautiful, Sunset, Reflection

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• It's not the most powerful animal that survives. It's the most efficient.

  Georges St-Pierre

  Powerful, Animal, Mma

  FaceBook post by Georges St-Pierre from May 25, 2011

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• But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

  Thornton Wilder

  Memories, Land, Bridges

  Thornton Wilder (1956). “A Thornton Wilder Trio: The Cabala, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, The Woman of Andros”

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• People have traditionally turned to ritual to help them frame and acknowledge and ultimately even find joy in just such a paradox of being human - in the fact that so much of what we desire for our happiness and need for our survival comes at a heavy cost.

  Michael Pollan

  Nature, People, Joy

  Michael Pollan (2013). “A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder”, p.196, Random House

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• Compassion is not an option. It's the key to our survival.

  Karen Armstrong

  Compassion, Keys

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• My own survival required me to counterbalance interesting with invisible.

  Rachel Hartman

  Interesting, Invisible, My Own

  Rachel Hartman (2012). “Seraphina”, p.63, Random House

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• Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action...To remain alive, he must think.

  John Galt

  Men, Thinking, Mind

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• suicide is absolute, and if you think you will survive by hiding who you really are, you are sadly misled: there is no such thing as partial or intermittent suicide. You can only survive if you - who you really are - do survive.

  June Jordan

  Suicide, Thinking, Hiding

  June Jordan (2009). “Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays”, p.93, Basic Books

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• You need to be hyper-aware because it's your survival at stake.

  Jon Lee Anderson

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• It's hard to give up the self-esteem connected to being codependent and appearing 'right,' which is probably a survival behavior learned from growing up in a crazy family. It feels like you will actually disappear.

  Melody Beattie

  Giving Up, Growing Up, Crazy

  "Treating Codependence: Q&A With Author Melody Beattie". Interview with Martha Rosenberg, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 14, 2011.

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• Cancer victims who don't accept their fate, who don't learn to live with it, will only destroy what little time they have left.

  Ingrid Bergman

  Cancer, Fate, Littles

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• When I'm filming, survival requires movement. You need your energy, and you've got to eat the bad stuff, and survival food is rarely pretty, but you kind of do it. I get in that zone, and I eat the nasty stuff, but I'm not like that when I'm back home.

  Bear Grylls

  Home, Energy, Needs

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• It's interesting that people bring different things to oppressive and difficult situations, when they're reduced to the barest terms of survival. That's what provides tension in a lot of films.

  Sharon Salzberg

  Difficult Situations, People, Interesting

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• John Boehner is the ultimate Beltway hack, a man whose unmatched and self-serving skill at political survival has made him, after two decades in Washington, the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich.

  Matt Taibbi

  Men, Blue, Self

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• Survival, in the cool economics of biology, means simply the persistence of one's own genes in the generations to follow.

  Lewis Thomas

  Mean, Persistence, Generations

  Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam

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• Things we cannot solve, we must survive.

  Boyd K. Packer

  Adversity, Solve

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• . . . your history is no less important to your survival than your ability to breathe. In the end, you can only determine whether to saturate your memories with pain or with perspective. Forgetting is not an option. I tell you the truth now: Pain was not God's plan for this life. It is a reality, but it is not a part of the plan.

  Ted Dekker

  Pain, Memories, Reality

  Ted Dekker (2010). “Dekker 4-in-1 Bundle: Black, Showdown, Heaven's Wager & Kiss”, p.844, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• I had to stop hoping so much that a ship would rescue me. I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me. In my experience, a castaway’s worst mistake is to hope too much and to do too little. 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

  Dream, Mistake, Hands

  "Life of Pi". Book by Yann Martel, September 11, 2001.

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• 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

  Suffering, Care, Oleanders

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• As the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Struggle, Mean, People

  Viktor E. Frankl (2011). “The Unheard Cry for Meaning: Psychotherapy and Humanism”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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