Home / Topics / Survival Quotes

Survival Quotes

Browse 3207 quotes about Survival.

Survival Quotes

“Having the right to show up and speak are basic to survival, to dignity, and to liberty.”

Shows Speak Liberty Survival Dignity

Book:Men Explain Things to Me: And Other Essays

Source: Men Explain Things to Me: And Other Essays

“If we do not speak for Earth, who will? If we are not committed to our own survival, who will be?”

Ifs Earth Speak Survival Committed

Book:Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

“[The poet] is endowed to speak for those who do not have the gift of language, or to see for those who - for whatever reasons - are less conscious of what they are living through. It is as though the risks of the poet's existence can be put to some use beyond her own survival.”

Reason Use Speak Language Existence Risk Poet Survival Conscious

Author:Adrienne Rich

“We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle-class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.”

Source: The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations

“Psychologist Nathaniel Branden speaks of a benevolent sense of life possible to those with rational, productive values, vividly contrasted with the coercive parasitic group-culture of mystics and altruists we live in, where people all around you seem a burdensome annoyance, a threat to your survival. Having been told from childhood that life is a zero-sum game in which you owe everything to others, at some level you worry all the time that someday the bastards will collect. And collect they do, every April 15th. Why do you think they call it collectivism?”

“Music speaks of Platonic truth - the ideal river rather than the polluted reality, love as we dream it rather than we experience it, grief noble and uplifting rather than our distracted weeping. It is necessary to our survival and our sanity.”

Dream Reality Speak Grief Survival Ideals Rivers Noble Uplifting Sanity Distracted Weeping Platonic Music Speaks

Author:Pam Brown

“The failure of unions to support efforts to increase employee involvement and ownership coincided with their unwillingness to speak out on the broader issues of business effectiveness and performance. When foreign competitors threatened the survival of American manufacturers, unions chose to voice traditional employee demands for higher wages, better benefits, and more security. What they failed to provide were effective responses to the challenge of globalization.”

Speak Challenges Effort Support Security Survival Response Employee Ownership Globalization Involvement

Author:James O'Toole

“Each year, in this world, several languages do die out. There are certain languages that have their survival assured for many years, such as English, but there are other languages whose survival is not so sure, such as Catalan, especially if they don't have a state that protects them. Catalan is spoken in Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and Andorra. There are about ten million people who understand it and eight and a half who can speak it. But its future is much less certain than, for example, Danish or Slovenian or Latvian, because they have a state.”

People World Speak Language Protect Survival

Author:Jaume Cabre

“The most important thing for our species is, before it speaks, to listen to its environment. That has a higher priority in any species' survival. We need to be listening to our environment - in other words, restoring the quiet - not just to our natural areas, but also to towns like Portland, Maine.”

Important Speak Natural Environment Listening Quiet Survival Priorities Our Environment

Author:Gordon Hempton

“I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.”

Knows Important Pain Speak Felt Walks Share Duty Survival Rain Intense Triumph Speak The Truth

Book:Conversations with Audre Lorde

Source: Conversations with Audre Lorde

“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.”

Earth Speak Planets Evolution Survival Spring Species Ancient Positive Atheism Loyalty Obligation Cosmos

Author:Carl Sagan

“Surely no rational or realistic person will discount the possibility that [during wartime] the United States might suddenly resort to nuclear weapons. Those who retain the instinct for survival, not to speak of minimal concern for their fellow man, will seek ways to act before rather than after the event.”

“As I have discovered by examining my past, I started out as a child. Coincidentally, so did my brother. My mother did not put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak: she gave me a younger brother named Russell, who taught me what was meant by 'survival of the fittest.'”