top of page
Survival Quotes


"Brotherhood is the very price and condition of man's survival."


"Independence is not a whim or an ambition. It is the necessary condition of our survival as an ethnic group."


"Self-interest is but the survival of the animal in us. Humanity only begins for man with self-surrender."


"Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations."


"A declining institution often experiences survival of the unfittest."


"Instead of working for the survival of the fittest, we should be working for the survival of the wittiest - then we can all die laughing."


"A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows."


"Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking."


"I noticed the plants growing around me. Tall with leaves like arrowheads. Blossoms with three white petals. I knelt down in the water, my fingers digging into the soft mud, and I pulled up handfuls of the roots. Small, bluish tubers that don't look like much but boiled or baked are as good as any potato. "Katniss, I said aloud. It's the plant I was named for. And I heard my father's voice joking, "As long as you can find yourself, you'll never starve."


"A woman once held a Canary in the palm of her hand and stroked her and whispered a careful warning. The canary, seeking some freedom to fly, went into the mine while the woman watched in worry. The mine was filled with toxic gases and the Canary began to sing. She flew into danger, realized the threats around her, and wished to return to a place of refuge."


"Through the evolutionary process, those who are able to engage in social cooperation of various sorts do better in survival and reproduction."


"All right, so give me some idea of what you can do," says Haymitch.I can't do anything," says Peeta, "unless you count baking bread."Sorry, I don't. Katniss. I already know you're handy with a knife, says Haymitch.Not really. But I can hunt, I say. "With a bow and arrow.And you're good? asks Haymitch.I have to think about it. I've been putting food on the table for four years. That's no small task. I'm not as good as my father was, but he'd had more practice. I've better aim than Gale, but I've had more practice. He's a genius with traps and snares. "I'm all right, I say."


"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."


"Katniss: 'What about you? Ive seen you in the market. You can lift hundred pound bags of flour'. I snap at himTell him that. Thats not nothing.Peeta: Yes and Im sure the arena will be full of bags of flour for me to chuck at people."



"Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear?Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feetdeep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the longnight, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little childrenare born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt andhungry, and the white walkers move through the woods."


"The best thing about the street is not what you've got, it is about what you do with what you've got."


"In our struggle to restrain the violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that it is also a crucial survival tool."


"Thalia had gotten herself turned into a pine tree when she was twelve. Me ... Well, I was doingmy best not to follow her example. I had nightmares about what Poseidon might turn me intoif I were ever on the verge of death--plankton, maybe. Or a floating patch of kelp."


"I may find Saddam Hussein's regime abhorrent - any normal person would - but the survival of it is in his hands."


"He dragged me back - just in time. A tree had crashed down on to the side walk, just missing us. Poirot stared at it, pale and upset. "It was a near thing that! But clumsy, all the same - for I had no suspicion - at least hardly any suspicion. Yes, but for my quick eyes, the eyes of a cat, Hercule Poirot might now be crushed out of existence - a terrible calamity for the world. And you, too, mon ami - though that would not be such a national catastrophe." "Thank you," I said coldly."


"As a journalist, it is so easy to get hardened when you see so many stories that are disturbing. Sometimes it's just your survival mechanism that makes you hardened to some of it."


"There were days when I still put on make up in case you'd come back,but I wear the same clothes and shower in the rainand eat when I can and sleep when I can,which is rare and not often,so if you'd see me nowon these streetswhere I once imagined walking with youyou'd have a hard time recognising me.I takes a lot to run away."


"But for now, the future, like the past, means nothing. For now, there is only a homestead built of trash and scraps, at the edge of a broken city, just beyond a towering city dump; and our arrival-hungry, and half-frozen, to a place of food and water and walls that keep out the brutal winds. This, for us, is heaven."


"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."



"Everything man needs is in the world."


"Clothes are but little loss, if you escape from drowning."


"Young Cyclopes grow up alone on the streets, learn to make things out of scraps. Learn to survive...makes us appreciate blessings, not be greedy and mean and fat..."


"I haven't seen the show, but when it was finished I felt good about what we had done. I don't know how it will stack up with Survival, but that'll be up to the critics."
bottom of page

