Quotes about Survival

If a blade of grass can grow in a concrete walk and a fig tree in the side of a mountain cliff, a human being empowered with an invincible faith can survive all odds the world can throw against his tortured soul.

It may seem hard to extend our gratefulness and appreciation to the time in which we live and the challenges it presents-to financial crisis, global climate change, terrorism, wars, energy depletion, and any other disasters looming on the horizon.  It would be much easier to appreciate an era of good feeling, peace and calm stability!  But difficult times are also times of growth, of new insights and opportunities, of creativity, and of emergence.

We will find the key to our liberation only when we accept that what we once did to survive is now destroying us.

This world has seen a great many civilizations.  And many of them have survived for longer periods than ours up to the present.  They were all as sure as we are today of having founded the first eternal civilization.  We today differ from them in having our western civilization spread to embrace the entire planet, leaving no room on any continent for any other culture to take over if we fail.

The problem is no longer that with every pair of hands that comes into the world there comes a hungry stomach.  Rather it is that, attached to those hands are sharp elbows.

Our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

Survival is a privilege which entails obligations. I am forever asking myself what I can do for those who have not survived. The answer I have found for myself (and which need not necessarily be the answer for every survivor) is: I want to be their mouthpiece, I want to keep their memory alive, to make sure the dead live on in that memory.

        what is my purpose in life, what is my responsibility?
        whether I like it or not, I am on this planet
        and it is far better to do something for humanity.

        so you see that compassion is the seed or basis.

       If we take care to foster compassion,
       we will see that it brings the other good human qualities.

       the topic of compassion is not at all religious business;
       it is very important to know that it is human business
       that it is a question of human survival
       that is not a question of human luxury....

       It is clear that even without religion we can manage.

       However, without these basic human qualities we cannot survive.
       It is a question of our own peace and mental stability.

The future belongs to those who survive their past

"They gave me six months to live, and I gave 'em three and a half years of living."

I was encouraged from the beginning to see the Earth as the best teacher and in addition was taught the old Gypsy arts of surviving the gaujo [non-Gypsy] world, much of which involved surviving the world outside your door emotionally.

Architecturally forging an intelligent alliance with the world population for Our Destiny.

Anything that may extend the existence of a human is humane, no matter the side effects.

It takes money to make money, even begging. Humans are herd animals. If a stranger’s bleeding to death beside the road, most people won’t stop to offer a Band-Aid. But get the ball rolling with a couple Good Samaritans, and before you know it you’ve got more eager philanthropists than you know what to do with.

"We'll never survive!"
"Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has."

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."

In the West you have been struggling for many years with the problem of evil. But in the light of non-duality, there is not any problem.  You need both right and left to have a branch. Do not take sides, if you take sides, you are trying to eliminate half of reality, which is impossible. For many years, the United States has been trying to describe the Soviet Union as the evil side. Some Americans even have the illusion they can survive alone, without the other half. If we look at America very deeply, we see the Soviet Union. And if we look deeply at the Soviet union, we see America. If we look deeply at the rose, we see the garbage; if we look deeply at the garbage, we see the rose. In this international situation, each side is pretending to be the rose, and calling the other side garbage.

Survival means the survival of human kind as a whole, not just a part of it. If the South cannot survive, then the North is going to crumble. If countries of Third World cannot pay their debts, you are going to suffer here in the North. If you do not take care of the Third World, your well-being is not going to last, and you will not be able to continue living in the way you have been much longer. It is leaping out at us already. You cannot leave the job to the governments or the political scientists alone. You have to do it yourself.

Give me control over a man's economic actions, and hence over his means of survival, and except for a few occasional heroes, I'll promise to deliver to you men who think and write and behave as I want them to.

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

Damaged people are dangerous.  They know they can survive.

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

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries.  Without them humanity cannot survive.

All of the elements of the comic way tend to spread to others, insinuating joy where it was previously absent. Conversation has a way of leaping among persons, as it does at parties and celebratory gatherings. Storytelling always begets storytelling. It is difficult to watch others at play without wanting to join them. This is not only a human phenomenon, for researchers have consistently noted that animals at play are often imitated by other animals. So wherever it is possible to initiate a playful activity, it will have a good chance of replicating itself through other parts of the system.

My face set to a grim and determined expression. I speak in all modesty as I say this, but I discovered at that moment that I have a fierce will to live. It's not something evident, in my experience. Some of us give up on life with only a resigned sigh. Others fight a little, then lose hope. Still others--and I am one of those-- never give up. We fight and fight and fight. We fight no matter the cost of battle, the losses we take, the improbability of success. We fight to the very end. It's not a question of courage. It's something constitutional, an inability to let go. It maybe nothing more than life-hungry stupidity.

As Darwin saw it, it's not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but those who are most responsive to change.

But the human body has an enormous capacity for adjusting to trying circumstances. I have found that one can bear the unbearable if one can keep one's spirits strong even when one's body is being tested. Strong convictions are the secret of surviving deprivation; your spirit can be full even when your stomach is empty.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

“For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.”

She survived it.  She was able to survive it because she did not believe in suffering.  She faced with astonished indignation the ugly fact of feeling pain, and refused to let it matter.  Suffering was a senseless accident, it was not part of life as she saw it.  She would not allow pain to become important.  She had no name for the kind of resistance she offered, for the emotion from which the resisstance came; but the words that stood as its equivalent in her mind were:  It does not count- it is not to be taken seriously.  She knew these were the words, even in the moments when there was nothing left within her but screaming and she wished she could lose the faculty of consciousness so that it would not tell her that what could not be true was true.  Not to be taken seriously- an immovable certainty within her kept repeating- pain and ugliness are never to be taken seriously.