Human Survival Quotes

#1. The weather, the plants, the animals, and our human survival are all inextricably linked. The natural elements were at war with one another because we abused our ecosystem. Abused our atmosphere. Abused our animals. Abused our fellow man.

Tahereh Mafi

#2. There is no doubt that human survival will continue to depend more and more on human intellect and technology. It is idle to argue whether this is good or bad. The point of no return was passed long ago, before anyone knew it was happening.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

#3. By the end of this decade we will live under the first One World Government that has ever existed in the society of nations ... a government with absolute authority to decide the basic issues of human survival. One world government is inevitable.

Pope John Paul II

#4. The addition of certain chemicals to the atmosphere will destroy wavelengths of light and it may only be a matter of time before one of these wavelengths of light that is critical for human survival is eliminated. This is called: The Extinction Wavelength

Steven Magee

#5. The topic of compassion is not at all religious business; it is important to know it is human business, it is a question of human survival.

Dalai Lama XIV

#6. Compassion is not religious business, it is human business, it is not luxury, it is essential for our own peace and mental stability, it is essential for human survival.

Dalai Lama XIV

#7. And it was only when we invented the spear and began roaming the planet that technologies got complex and central to human survival.

Kirkpatrick Sale

#8. I think my government are fascists. I feel that if we don't change from a society that worships money and power over to one that worships compassion and generosity, there is no hope for human survival this century.

Patch Adams

#9. There was the natural human survival instinct to be optimistic.

Barbara Demick

#10. Science has made unrestricted national sovereignty incompatible with human survival. The only possibilities are now world government or death.

Bertrand Russell

#11. But the culture has failed, almost entirely, in inculcating internal controls on actions that have their origin in authority. For this reason, the latter constitutes a far greater danger to human survival.

Stanley Milgram

#12. I truly believe that compassion provides the basis of human survival.

Dalai Lama

#13. It is precisely because neither individuals nor small groups can be fully self-sufficient that cooperation is necessary to human survival and flourishing.

Tom G. Palmer

#14. Human survival is something that you can't see in another person; you can see if someone has that will to survive or that will to win; you can't see that, you can only watch that evolve over time.

Dhani Jones

#15. Each of us must learn to work not just for one self, one's own family or one's nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace.

Dalai Lama

#16. We have the capability - physically, technically - to protect the Earth from asteroid impacts. We are now able to very slightly and subtly reshape the solar system in order to enhance human survival.

Rusty Schweickart

#17. The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.

Noam Chomsky

#18. Humans are a great survivor species but our survival will be pretty grim if all of the plants and animals we depend on die out. That's why any human survival strategy has to include a plan to maintain our environment roughly in the state that it's in now.

Annalee Newitz

#19. The biggest threats to human survival today are not wars or conflict, it is modern business.

Steven Magee

#20. Evolutionary theory holds that our ability to sense when we should be suspicious has been every bit as essential for human survival as our capacity for trust and cooperation.

Daniel Goleman

#21. Human survival requires that nation-states give up the institution of war and replace it with a cooperatively-functioning global peace system - for the well-being and security of all people everywhere.

Douglas P. Fry

#22. the old "4-4-40" rough standard for human survival: four minutes without air, four days without water, forty days without food.

Don Winslow

#23. Greed is rightly considered a "deadly sin" because it erodes the moral values that encourage us to care for the common good. Greed violates the spirit of connectedness and community that is natural to human survival [...] replacing this awareness with harmful self-centeredness.

Bell Hooks

#24. She would never be caught unprepared again, she swore to herself. She would never trust. Never love. Never put faith in other human beings again. She would learn all she could of the shape and substance of the world, and she would find a way to survive in it.

David Anthony Durham

#25. Allowing women the power to decide when and whether to have children is the only way to solve the 7 billion human load on this planet that threatens to destroy it. Women's equality is also men's survival.

Gloria Steinem

#26. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more - if more should be required - the future of human civilization is at stake.

Al Gore

#27. As time goes by, as time goes by, the whip-crack of the years, the precipice of illusions, the ravine that swallows up all human endeavour except the struggle to survive.

Roberto Bolano

#28. The human young must learn to perceive these affordances, in some degree at least, but the young of some animals do not have time to learn the ones that are crucial for survival.

James J. Gibson

#29. With their survival as an institution and as individual human beings at stake, the Marines have had to ruthlessly and endlessly examine, discard, define, refine, and redefine their approaches to achieve the ultimate in rapid, effective response to dynamic challenges.

David A. Freedman

#30. Survival is not so much about the body, but rather it is about the triumph of the human spirit.

Danitra Vance

#31. Killing a cop just because he's a cop, that'll happen. And that should happen. And there's nothing inhuman about it at all. It's survival. It's the most human thing in the world.

Bernardine Dohrn

#32. I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be space and that it represents an important life insurance for our future survival, as it could prevent the disappearance of humanity by colonizing other planets,

Stephen Hawking

#33. We need art. We've been telling stories since the beginning. As human beings, we need it for our survival.

Lili Taylor

#34. The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world.

M. Scott Peck

#35. Survival is for the human animal; fear the motivation. For the spiritual being survival is irrelevant. Curiosity, compassion and creativity are the name of the game; unconditional love the motivation.

Peter Shepherd

#36. The things that are least important for our survival are the very things that make us human.

Savas Dimopoulos

#37. People have a need for certainty - and that need for certainty is in every human being, certainty that you can avoid pain, certainty that you can at least be comfortable. It's a survival instinct.

Tony Robbins

#38. Whether the are splashed with gold or white, striped with chartreuse or cream, or margined in light tones, they are nature's weaklings, and nature is still a matter of survival of the fittest. The survival of variegated plants depends on human intervention.

Allen Lacy

#39. We never surrendered. We always kept in our hearts the most noble, beautiful feeling that sets human beings apart: hope.

Manel Loureiro

#40. At the end of the day, we're all striving to be touched, somehow.

Crystal Woods

#41. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.

Noam Chomsky

#42. We are at a point in human evolution when human solidarity on a global scale is absolutely vital for the survival of the human species. That means understanding that ... we are all co-inhabitants of this planet.

Petra Kelly

#43. Contrary to popular opinion, we are all a vast brotherhood of human beings whose very survival hinges not on what we keep, but on what we give. And it is in the giving that we not only survive to live another day, but we thrive to celebrate another day.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#44. It's like this. Terror might make someone kill, but love will make someone die. People die for love. They would give up anything for love, even their life. And don't you see, that's a denial of the most basic of all human instincts: survival.

Benjamin Percy

#45. I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively, instead of skeptically and dictatorially.

E.B. White

#46. For the first time in human history the psychology that is a prerequisite for intimacy has become the psychology that is a prerequisite for species survival.

Warren Farrell

#47. Yet he saw that in all places there was originality, resulting from the human efforts at decoration and ingenious methods of survival.

Michael D. O'Brien

#48. When the survival strategy of a civilization is invalidated, in all of human history none have ever turned back from the brink.

Daniel Suarez

#49. The juke joint, the honky tonk, and the ballroom also represent one more thing, anthropologically speaking: a ceremonial context for the male-with-female-duet dance flirtation and embrace, upon which the zoological survival of the human species has always been predicated.

Albert Murray

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

Albert Einstein

#51. We always find something, eh Didi, to let us think we exist?

Samuel Beckett

#52. Many say exploration is part of our destiny, but it's actually our duty to future generations and their quest to ensure the survival of the human species.

Buzz Aldrin

#53. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.

Richard Dawkins

#54. The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenseless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenseless against ourselves.

Arnold Joseph Toynbee

#55. Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.

Laura Hillenbrand

#56. I agree with you, Captain," he whispered. "The human race has to live with its conscience. Whatever the Hermians argue, survival is not everything.

Arthur C. Clarke

#57. If life is a process of self-sustaining action, then this is the distinctly human mode of action and survival: to think--to produce--to meet the challenges of existence by a never-ending effort and inventiveness.

Ayn Rand

#58. We are humanity, the banner read. Wrong. We're pale reflections of it, weak shadows, distant echoes.

Rick Yancey

#59. There is a human longing to go back to other times. We all know how when we were children we asked our parents, "What was it like when you were a kid?" I think it probably has something to do with our survival as a species.

David McCullough

#60. No species ... possesses a purpose beyond the imperatives created by genetic history ... The human mind is a device for survival and reproduction, and reason is just one of its various techniques.

E. O. Wilson

#61. A belief in the immortality of the human soul, of the survival of the person beyond death, is one of the most important expressions of human hope.

Benedict Groeschel

#62. 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.

Katherine Dunn

#63. The orientation of man toward survival, to the exclusion of other considerations, has made society a grim place to live in, and for the most part human society has been a place where, though man has survived physically he has died emotionally.

Anonymous

#64. For the continued survival of our planet and humanity, it is crucial that certain discoveries and skills and inventions made by people over the years be passed on from one human generation to the next, from one person, face-to-face, to another.

Chris Raschka

#65. Sometimes even now I entertain the hope that Love lives in the world independently of us, but when I am most courageous, I believe that love was born within the human heart, and that the survival of love in the world, as well as its ultimate triumph, is entirely our responsibility.

Catherine M. Wilson

#66. We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward. In times of tragedy, of war, of necessity, people do amazing things. The human capacity for survival and renewal is awesome.

Isabel Allende

#67. Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.

Adlai E. Stevenson

#68. Having people in different optimal environments increases the chances of survival of the human race as a whole. It is nature's way to preserve her species.

Marti Olsen Laney

#69. When everything is subject to money, then the scarcity of money makes everything scarce, including the basis of human life and happiness. Such is the life of the slave - one whose actions are compelled by threat to survival. Perhaps the deepest indication of our slavery is the monetization of time.

Charles Eisenstein

#70. We are facing a tipping point of environmental crisis unprecedented in human history and our very survival is dependent on protecting nature.

Leonardo DiCaprio

#71. Bandit or demon, human or beast, none of it made any difference. The bandits had made this a situation of predators and prey. Only living mattered. Everything else was nothing more than an afterthought.

Drew Hayes

#72. More and more clearly every day, out of biology, anthropology, sociology, history, economic analysis, psychological insight, plain human decency and common sense, the necessary mandate of survival that we shall love all our neighbors as we do ourselves, is being confirmed and reaffirmed.

Ordway Tead

#73. The secrecy of our existence is the key to our survival. The existence of a frail human will never stand upon that.'
Lothaire

Rita Dinis

#74. We must start by recognizing that the human mind was not designed for happiness. It was designed by natural selection to facilitate the survival and reproduction of human beings in an environment that existed tens of thousands of years ago. We know this because we know how natural selection works.

Chris Wilson

#75. Wherever there was a scrap of soil amongst the ravaged crags, emaciated trees struggled to cling on: a poignant metaphor for the way so many Nepalis eke out an existence, defiantly surviving on less than nothing.

Jane Wilson-Howarth

#76. One of the fundamental ways man adapts is to acquire and possess property. It is how he makes his home, finds or grows food, makes clothing, and generally improves his life. Private property is not an artificial construct. It is endemic to human nature and survival.

Mark R. Levin

#77. Innate human tendencies were meant to help us survive the wilderness, not make investment decisions.

Coreen T. Sol

#78. Compassion allows us to understand that, as citizens of the planet, we're all in this together and that in order to ensure our survival we must hold and cultivate a new and larger vision of what's possible for ourselves and for the human race as a whole.

Debbie Ford

#79. I know human nature. We might sacrifice a few, because we are stupid and hardwired for group survival. But we would never die in the thousands because a god wished it. Those kinds of numbers require material gains, like power, wealth, territory.

Ilona Andrews

#80. If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so much in the survival of our own species as in the fulfillment of the ultimate irony of organic evolution: that in the instant of achieving self-understanding through the mind of man, life has doomed its most beautiful creations.

Edward O. Wilson

#81. This principle holds that a reconnection to the natural world is fundamental to human health, well-being, spirit, and survival.

Richard Louv

#82. But it is imperative, for our own survival, that we avoiid one another, and what more successful means of avoidance are there than words? Language will keep us safe from human onslaught, will express for us our regret at being unable to supply groceries or love or peace.

Janet Frame

#83. The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century. Speaking as a mathematician, I should say the odds are about three to one against survival.

Bertrand Russell

#84. Humans become human through intense learning not just of survival skills but of customs and social mores, kinship and social laws-that is, culture.

Richard Leakey

#85. It is astonishing how the human animal survives its misfortunes.

Rebecca West

#86. Nanotechnology in medicine is going to have a major impact on the survival of the human race.

Bernard Marcus

#87. Today, the fundamental global objective of all education aspiring not only to progress but to the survival of humanity is to Civilize and Unify the Earth and Transform the human species into genuine humanity The education of the future should teach an ethics of planetary understanding.

Edgar Morin

#88. It was the price of survival. The cost of his people's last, desperate gamble:
To rid his new home of humanity, he had to become human.
And being human, he had to overcome his humanity.

Rick Yancey

#89. The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.

Adrienne Rich

#90. a man can be human only under human conditions." The purpose of the state is to preserve these conditions, so that its citizens need not see personal survival as their only goal.

Timothy Snyder

#91. For the human soul is virtually indestructible, and its ability to rise from the ashes remains as long as the body draws breath.

Alice Miller

#92. The power of the man, with a mind shut down. The strength of the super human. The survival of the species. The deafness of a beast. That's the power of the penis.

Deborah Ainslie

#93. The human mind is a rover, it constantly returns to think about times past, cogitates upon the future, and actively considers the entire range of alternative plans to meet our daily survival demands.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#94. Wild animals are only wild to save their existence...for their survival; but human animals are wild to do harm to their own species

Munia Khan

#95. To be thankful for just being alive...To survive means to win... That only applies to animals, but I'm a human being!

Nobuyuki Fukumoto

#96. I think of everything and I'm pretty sure if I could use my organizational skills for something else, like wildlife survival kits or preparing people for nuclear warfare, I'd be a millionaire. Or at the very least actually a useful human being.

Corey Ann Haydu

#97. Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.

Rene Dubos

#98. A young man needs to know where he stands in the world, not just as a matter of basic human dignity but as determinants in the ways and means of survival, and what you might hope to gain by application of honest effort -

Ben Fountain

#99. Ariel: "Why do such stories always sound so sad? Why can't people part on more amiable terms?"
Danny: "Human nature," he said. "When feelings change and a person is at their most insecure, it's a matter of personal survival, I think. It's not always meant to hurt, but it often does.

Judith-Victoria Douglas

#100. The instinct to survive will never change, neither will the human body's amazing ability to endure.

Lofty Wiseman