Survival quotes
1.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside survival — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Let's face it: I'm scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess, I'm afraid for myself...the old primitive urge for survival. It's getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity."
"Morals - all correct moral laws - derive from the instinct to survive. Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level."
"The end and goal of any society as it addresses the problem of education is to raise the ability, the initiative and the cultural level, and with all these the survival level of that society."
"Women are necessarily capable of almost anything in their struggle for survival and can scarcely be convicted of such man-made crimes as “cruelty."
"I have one instinct stronger than any other thing in life, and that is the instinct for survival."
"The story of survival is a nice metaphor for our experience making this movie, finding your inner strength and powering through and getting to the endpoint alive."
"Writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity."
"We are all precancerous."
"There is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion."
"The conflict of theories, leading, as it eventually must, to the survival of the fittest, is advantageous."
"Humans may be destroying their chances for decent survival. It won't kill everybody, but it would change the world dramatically."
"In a moment of crisis, of which there are all too many, Russian military planners may conclude that lacking a deterrent, the only hope of survival is a first strike - which means the end for all of us."
"On nuclear war, actions in Syria and at the Russian border raise very serious threats of confrontation that might trigger war, an unthinkable prospect. Furthermore, Trump's pursuit of Obama's programs of modernization of the nuclear forces poses extraordinary dangers. As we have recently learned, the modernized U.S. nuclear force is seriously fraying the slender thread on which survival is suspended."
"The most important issues to address are the truly existential threats we face: climate change and nuclear war. On the former, the Republican leadership, in splendid isolation from the world, is almost unanimously dedicated to destroying the chances for decent survival; strong words, but no exaggeration. There is a great deal that can be done at the local and state level to counter their malign project."
"A property of an organism enters into its life (and survival) in many different ways, some more salient than others. But there is no simple notion of its being "for" some function."
"Well, biology today as I see it has an amiable look - quite different from the 19th-century view that the whole arrangement of nature is hostile, 'red in tooth and claw.' That came about because people misread Darwin's 'survival of the fittest.'"
"We need science, more and better science, not for its technology, not for leisure, not even for health or longevity, but for the hope of wisdom which our kind of culture must acquire for its survival."
"Survival in the demand economy depends on and requires experimentation, risk taking, and trial and error."
"Obviously, my perception of the world is one where humans are a threat to our survival."
"Survival first, then heartbreak."
