Survival Quotes - Page 16

• The secret of survival is a defective imagination.

  John Banville

  Imagination, Secret, Defective

  John Banville (2010). “The Infinities”, p.37, Pan Macmillan

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• It is quite clear that as long as the nations of the world spend most of their energy, money, and emotional strength in quarreling with words and weapons, a true offensive against the common problems that threaten human survival is not very likely. A world government that can channel human efforts in the direction of the great solutions seems desirable, even essential. Naturally, such a world government should be a federal one, with regional and local autonomy safeguarded and with cultural diversity promoted.

  Isaac Asimov

  Emotional, World Government, Law

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• Survival in the conventional sense of the term means to continue to live, but also to live after death.

  Jacques Derrida

  Mean, Term, After Death

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• Is it wholly fantastic to admit the possibility that Nature herself strove toward what we call beauty? Face to face with any one of the elaborate flowers which man's cultivation has had nothing to do with, it does not seem fantastic to me. We put survival first. But when we have a margin of safety left over, we expend it in the search for the beautiful. Who can say that Nature does not do the same?

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Beauty, Beautiful, Flower

  Joseph Wood Krutch (1967). “And even if you do: essays on man, manners & machines”

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• In my considered opinion, the profit to be made by permanent settlement in space is nothing less than the survival of industrial civilization, and therefore the survival of nearly the entire human race, along with such amenities as peace, freedom, enough to eat, and the chance to reach a high age in good health.

  Poul Anderson

  Space, Race, Civilization

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• Fear is a survival instinct; fear in its way is a comfort for it means that somewhere hope is alive.

  Theodore Sturgeon

  Mean, Comfort, Alive

  Theodore Sturgeon (1965). “More Than Human”

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• For the storyteller, for the arrowmaker, language does indeed represent the only chance for survival.

  N. Scott Momaday

  Doe, Chance, Language

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• A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be...The law of survival of the fittest was not made by man, and it cannot be abrogated by man. We can only, by interfering with it, produce the survival of the unfittest.

  William Graham Sumner

  Men, Law, Gutters

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• Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on The Survival of the Fittest. These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.

  Mark Twain

  Science, Law, Names

  Mark Twain, David Ketterer (1984). “The science fiction of Mark Twain”

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• Five per cent vision is better than no vision at all. Five per cent hearing is better than no hearing at all. Five per cent flight efficiency is better than no flight at all. It is thoroughly believable that every organ or apparatus that we actually see is the product of a smooth trajectory through animal space, a trajectory in which every intermediate stage assisted survival and reproduction.

  Richard Dawkins

  Science, Animal, Space

  Richard Dawkins (2015). “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, p.96, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It is with our entire past ... that we desire, will and act ... from this survival of the past it follows that consciousness cannot go through the same state twice. The circumstances may still be the same, but they will act no longer on the same person ... that is why our duration is irreversible.

  Henri Bergson

  Science, Past, Desire

  Henri Bergson (2014). “Creative Evolution”, p.13, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Species do not grow more perfect: the weaker dominate the strong, again and again- the reason being that they are the great majority, and they are also cleverer. Darwin forgot the mind (-that is English!): the weak possess more mind. ... To acquire mind, one must need mind-one loses it when one no longer needs it.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Strong, Science, Perfect

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• This preservation of favourable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and would be left a fluctuating element.

  Charles Darwin

  Science, Would Be, Variation

  Charles Darwin (1869). “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.92

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• Why do some die and some live? The answer was clearly, that on the whole the best fitted live. From the effects of disease the most healthy escaped; from enemies, the strongest, swiftest, or the most cunning; from famine, the best hunters or those with the best digestion; and so on. Then it suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain-that is, the fittest would survive.

  Alfred Russel Wallace

  Science, Race, Self

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• Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.

  Carl Sagan

  Loyalty, Spring, Cosmos

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Book by Carl Sagan, 1980.

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• With the ministry's motto 'Research on a Shoestring' emblazoned on his coat of arms, he has to struggle with a treasury more interested in surtax relief than national survival. [Responding to an earlier statement by British Science Minister, Lord Hailsham, that British scientists were being recruited by the U.S.]

  Harold Wilson

  Struggle, Science, Relief

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• I don't think of myself as a terribly confident person. But I have a survival mechanism that was instilled in me by my mother.

  Naomi Watts

  Inspiring, Mom, Mother

  "Motherhood Quotes from the Pages of ELLE". www.elle.com. May 11, 2012.

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• Compassion and love is the source of external and internal peace and is also the root of racial survival.

  Dalai Lama

  Buddhist, Love Is, Compassion

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• We need artists to help us come together and share our voices and build community around powerful issues concerning our roles in the world and our planet's survival. Compassion must be translated into action.

  Natasha Mayers

  Teamwork, Powerful, Creativity

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• It has become accepted doctrine that we must attempt to study the whole man. Actually we cannot study even a whole tree or a whole guinea pig. But it is a whole tree and a whole guinea pig that have survived and evolved, and we must make the attempt.

  Gardner Murphy

  Science, Men, Pigs

  Gardner Murphy (1947). “Personality”

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• The crisis of our diminishing water resources is just as severe (if less obviously immediate) as any wartime crisis we have ever faced. Our survival is just as much at stake as it was at the time of Pearl Harbor, or the Argonne, or Gettysburg, or Saratoga.

  Jim Wright

  Rain, Rivers, Water

  Jim Wright (1966). “The Coming Water Famine”, New York : Coward-McCann

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• Survival is not possible if the best of us lack all conviction, while the worst of us are full of passionate intensity.

  John Silber

  Carpe Diem, Passionate, Conviction

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• No coward soul is mine.

  Emily Bronte

  Adventure, Soul, Coward

  "Last Lines" l. 1 (1846)

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• There is enough for everyone to have what they need without exploitation. Adequate distribution of resources, including education, without violence can lead to a sustainable system that doesn't stress the ecosphere. Alternately, continued violence feeds population surges and hoarding the products of exploitative extraction, which endanger the survival of our species. In short, if we want a future with humans on Earth, we've got to stop war.

  Vern Huffman

  War, Stress, Hoarding

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• The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival.

  Eric Hoffer

  Men, Kind, Evolution

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