Top 100 Quotes About Self Preservation
#1. This watching through cool intent eyes and delicately adjusting one factor or another till a man's fundamental instinct for self-preservation cracks, is savagery in its most pure, most polished and most highly evolved form.
Tana French
#2. We derive courage from love. Bravery borne from love trumps the ingrained desire for self-preservation.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#3. Total war uses every conceivable means toward the end of national self-preservation. Everything is right and permitted that serves the cause of one's own people.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#4. When a nation is on the downward path, when it feels its belief in its own future, its hope of freedom slipping from it, when it begins to see submission as a first necessity and the virtues of submission as measures of self-preservation, then it must overhaul its God.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#5. That mainstream English is essential to our self-preservation is indisputable ... but it is not necessary to abandon Spoken Soul to master Standard English, any more than it is necessary to abandon English to learn French or to deprecate jazz to appreciate classical music.
John R. Rickford
#6. Is a chameleon a coward because it can change its color? No. It's evolved and awesome. I like to think of myself in a similar fashion. There is nothing wrong with having a strong sense of self-preservation.
Penny Reid
#7. This - he gestured impatiently at himself - is just a fucking shell. You're what drives me, Eva. Can you understand that? You're my heart and soul. If something ever happened to you, it would kill me, too. Keeping you safe is goddamned self-preservation!
Sylvia Day
#9. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong - these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.
Winston S. Churchill
#10. Love is annoying like that. It takes away your sense of humor and self-preservation.
Audrey Hart
#11. I've got a sense of self-preservation. OK, granted , it's still in the original shrink wrap but I've got one if I ever want to use it.
Rachel Caine
#12. Luckily, I's learned at an early age that self-preservation was the only way to survive with your soul intact.
Abbi Glines
#13. One day, Annabel saw the sun and moon in the sky at the same time. The sight filled her with a terror which entirely consumed her and did not leave her until the night closed in catastrophe for she had no instinct for self-preservation if she was confronted by ambiguities.
Angela Carter
#14. His (the theologian) basic instinct of self preservation forbids him to respect reality at any point or even to let it get a word in.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#15. The modern state appeals to morality, to religion, and to natural law as the ideological foundation of its existence. At the same time it is prepared to infringe any or all of these in the interest of self-preservation.
J.M. Coetzee
#16. Do you have no sense of self-preservation?
Nalini Singh
#17. Man is wise to fear: it sharpens the sense of self-preservation.
Anne McCaffrey
#18. Self-preservation, nature's first great law, all the creatures, except man, doth awe.
Andrew Marvell
#19. The dead would be buried, and over time everything would be absorbed. All that remained would be a vague memory in their souls, the waste left by an inevitable process of self-preservation.
Donato Carrisi
#20. It's like they think we're still five years old, coloring in kindergarten, and all the kids get cupcakes whether its their birthday or not. Maybe its a kind of self-preservation. If parents actually knew what their kids were like, they'd probably shoot themselves in the head.
Coert Voorhees
#21. Everyone has a story; everyone hides his past as a means of self-preservation. Some just do it better, and more thoroughly, than others.
Jodi Picoult
#22. We legislate against forestalling and monopoly; we would have a common granary for the poor; but the selfishness which hoards thecorn for high prices, is the preventative of famine; and the law of self-preservation is surer policy than any legislation can be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#23. One's longing is not so much there for sense-gratification, profit and self-preservation, instead one's karma is there for no other purpose than inquiring after the Absolute Truth.
Ramesh Menon
#24. The instinct of self-preservation and the urge to self-destruction are equally strong in man! The Devil has equal a sway over humanity as God until a time still unknown to us.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#25. Just when had I become so self-absorbed? I was a form of self-preservation, I realized now; I had resolved that ... I could survive Colonel Wood's cruelty if my heart, my mind, had shrunk to a size designed to absorb my own troubles only.
Melanie Benjamin
#27. Self-preservation's a man's first duty. And natives don't mind dying, you know. They don't feel about it as Europeans do.
Agatha Christie
#28. I consider kissing her right there on the dirty couch, but self-preservation stops me. Once someone hurts you, it's harder to relax around them, harder to think of them as safe to love. But it doesn't stop you wanting them. Sometimes I actually think it makes the wanting worse
Holly Black
#29. Listen, emotions have logic. Without emotions humans wouldn't care for each other, and if they didn't care for each other, the species would have died out. To care for others is self-preservation. You care for someone and they care for you.
Matt Haig
#30. Sometimes when things are way too big and I can't control it, I do sort of a weird thing where I kind of check out a little bit. It's all about self-preservation for me.
Hoda Kotb
#31. I resisted the urge to point out that since Alona was already technically dead, it wouldn't really be homicide. I do have some sense of self-preservation.
Stacey Kade
#32. temples can wield great power, for they can motivate the masses to ignore self-preservation in the name of a holy cause. They have moral power, as well, ideally. But most are run by petty people with odd ideas about a civil society.
Terry Mancour
#33. Not that I don't appreciate the rescue," Holt said. "But I'm forced to ask, in the interest of self-preservation ... exactly how well armed are you right now?
Rachel Vincent
#34. There's so much that you can get mad about. Out of self-preservation, I focus on being grateful.
Mariska Hargitay
#35. Whenever human activity is directed exclusively to the service of the instinct for self-preservation it is called theft or usury, robbery or burglary etc
Adolf Hitler
#36. Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual's instinct for self preservation.
Albert Einstein
#37. Fuckin' A ... hope didn't so much spring eternal as it drowned out common sense and self-preservation.
J.R. Ward
#38. Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength
life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#39. Take away someone's fear, or low intelligence, or dishonesty ... and you take away their compassion. Take away someone's aggression and you take away their motivation, or their ability to assert themselves. Take away their selfishness and you take away their sense of self-preservation.
Veronica Roth
#40. To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless ... You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival.
Audre Lorde
#41. Self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue.
Baruch Spinoza
#42. The bigger the lie, the more believable it becomes to the average Arab citizen. Thus, Arab media never fail to be less than outrageous. They blamed the defeat on none other than Israel, as though self-defense and self-preservation was not a right to be exercised by the Jewish enemy.
Nonie Darwish
#43. Chess would teach me strategy, fencing would teach me human nature and self-preservation, and dancing would teach me my body. All necessary for a well-rounded person.
Penelope Douglas
#44. Interviewing someone is a very proactive process and requires taking a lot of agency into your own hands to get past people's general normal self-preservation mode.
Brandon Stanton
#45. If a man smite you on one cheek, smash him down; smite him hip and thigh, for self-preservation is the highest law.
Ragnar Redbeard
#46. He who governs himself according to what he calls his principles may be punished either by one party or the other for those very principles. He who proceeds without principle, as chance, timidity, or self-preservation directs, will not perhaps fare better; but he will be less blamed.
J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur
#48. That level of responsibility drastically conflicts with my belief in self-preservation by inactivity.
C.L. Allen
#49. The feudal concept of self-preservation is poisoned at the core by the virulent assumption of master and man, of potentate and slave, of external and internal suppression of the life urge of the only one - of its faith in human sacrifice as a means of salvation.
Louis Sullivan
#50. But poetry is not to be lived, except for the few to whom it is more important than self-preservation.
Rosamond Lehmann
#51. The instinct of self-preservation in human society, acting almost subconsciously, as do all drives in the human mind, is rebelling against the constantly refined methods of annihilation and against the destruction of humanity.
Bertha Von Suttner
#52. A biomass will live with a self-preservation instinct
Sunday Adelaja
#53. And this is the final meaning of work: the extension of human consciousness. The lesser meaning of work is the achieving of self-preservation.
D.H. Lawrence
#54. Most English writers are not interested in change but in the social novel. That demands a static backdrop. I'm intensely interested in change - probably as a matter of self-preservation. What the hell is going to happen next?
J.G. Ballard
#55. Banks have a strong self-preservation instinct and are quick to adapt to new regulations.
Herve Falciani
#56. I have an innate incompetence for anything mechanical. It has always seemed to me that a machine can tell from far away that I am afraid of it and that I don't understand anything about it, and breaks down on the spot out of sheer self-preservation.
Heda Margolius Kovaly
#57. Neighborliness is more than a slogan here; it is, as it has always been, an essential element of self-preservation in a challenging environment. The
Ted Koppel
#58. The one thing that is braver each day than I is my sense of self-preservation It moves not, and stands not, unless it is driven by something
Elliott Colla
#59. We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.
Thomas Jefferson
#60. Would I have fared better if I had stood my ground and stared down my pursuers? Could so-called self-preservation sometimes backfire and become the very cause of pain?
David Michie
#61. I laughed under my breath, and it sounded bitter. "Listen to me. What am I talking about, worth it? Is any experience or bit of beauty worth the cost of my life? I know nothing but safety and self-preservation at all costs."
"And yet," he said softly, "you're risking everything to help me.
Kate Avery Ellison
#62. He had all the self-preservation instincts of a bug near a shiny windshield.
Karen Chance
#63. The signs are just not subtle enough to pass onto oversight in lieu of self preservation.
Daleen Van Tonder
#64. There's a fine line between self-preservation and mummification.
Mik Everett
#65. if you only let your thoughts go, they can come up with all sorts of things, conjuring up images of anyone at all, making caricatures of even the people that you know and love most.
The self-preservation instinct. Let your subconscious make parodies of your loss and anxiety and jealousy.
Mons Kallentoft
#66. The walls of self-preservation that you build for today are the walls of self-imprisonment for tomorrow. Boundaries that you establish in your life as a protection for yourself today will feel like constraints tomorrow.
Sadhguru
#67. Self-respect, self-preservation, both of these things. And because you being willing to put up with my love is not good enough. Not even remotely. I'm not going to be your regular live-in fuck buddy, Jimmy, exclusive or not. Your whole offer is soul destroying.
Kylie Scott
#69. Honor was a luxury item, like hair pomade and snuff. Its only purpose was to show the world that you could afford to be impractical, that you had enough money to behave in a way that was compatible with some ludicrous code instead of acting out of self-preservation like the rest of humanity.
Cat Sebastian
#70. Owing to thousands of generations of over-justification bred into them to keep from the maddening awareness of the true composition of the world, people had a tendency to give themselves the freedom to do whatever Shane told them, as long as it did not conflict too much with their self-preservation.
Thomm Quackenbush
#71. Self-preservation - this is your new focus.
The only obligation of today is to preserve the breath of tomorrow. Then, once footing is regained, you can begin to fulfill debt obligations.
Debt is hindsight.
John-Talmage Mathis
#72. To be compromised you need to have a stake in things, you need to have something to lose and something to gain. You have to be risking yourself, not all the time, but enough of the time to be weighing things up, principle over self-preservation, the gains, the losses.
Patrick McGuinness
#73. As comedy presents the vital rhythm of self-preservation, tragedy exhibits that of self-consummation.
Susanne Katherina Langer
#74. If you lie down in a village square hoping to capture a sea gull, you could stay there your whole life without succeeding. But a hundred miles from shore it's different. Sea gulls have a highly developed instinct for self-preservation on land but at sea they're very cocky.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#76. the right to self-preservation could become egotism, and the power of generation could become license,
Fulton J. Sheen
#77. Human institutions depend for their existence and stability on the impulse of self-preservation and its close associate, the fear instinct.
Boris Sidis
#78. In any important relationship, we must always ask should we stay or leave. Perchance the correct answer exits in the reason for hanging on and the reason for finally moving on. Perchance self-sacrifice is required. Conversely, perhaps selfishness is called for as an act of self-preservation.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#79. Self-Preservation is a full-time occupation.
Ani DiFranco
#80. It was true. I wasn't good with liking someone. my instinct was total self-preservation: show no sign of weakness. This was my pathetic way of being shy.
Jennifer Castle
#81. Concerning the blindness and bigotry of people, the pleasures of hatred rise superior even to the instinct of self-preservation.
Isaac Asimov
#82. Her immediate impulse was one of self-preservation. She was tied up in this somehow, she didn't know why or how, but there was something waiting for her on the other side of this crowd.
V.S. Kemanis
#83. There are some things that a woman knows that she cannot tell even her family. It is part intuition and part self-preservation.
Alyson Richman
#84. For his sake, I'm glad he disappeared. I don't blame him. I know it was an act of self-preservation.
Hannah Hart
#85. I normally can't stand vice-free people. They conflate a narcissistic instinct for self-preservation with moral superiority. Plus they suck the life right out of a party.
Dennis Lehane
#86. After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment.
Judith Lewis Herman
#87. With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper.
Thorstein Veblen
#88. The fact that every people feel itself threatened by the others gives the state it's definite unifying powers; it depends upon the instinct of self-preservation of society itself; the latent external crisis enables it to get the upper hand in internal crises
Martin Buber
#89. It is in vain to oppose constitutional barriers to the impulse of self-preservation. It is worse than in vain; because it plants in the Constitution itself necessary usurpations of power, every precedent of which is a germ of unnecessary and multiplied repetitions.
James Madison
#90. The Bible is always short on details. Didn't Stephen's innate sense of self-preservation thwart his martyrdom at all?
Hope Jahren
#91. It is clear that corporate America has an obligation to create a fairer, more equitable, more sustainable economy for no other reason than self-preservation.
John J. Sarno
#92. The law of self-destruction and the law of self-preservation are equally strong in mankind!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#93. If the baser instinct of rampant self-preservation adamantly refuses to surrender itself to the infinitely greater call of self-sacrifice, in attempting to save our lives we will have in reality completely destroyed our lives.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#94. Damaged people were survivors, and they survived because they always put themselves first. Self-preservation demanded it.
Penelope Douglas
#95. Self-preservation is the fundamental motive of the passions, according to Spinoza; but self-preservation alters its character when we realize that what is real and positive in us is what unites us to the whole, and not what preserves the appearance of separateness.
Anonymous
#97. The first law of nature is self-preservation. Cut off that which may harm you. But if it is worth preserving, and is meaningful, nourish it and have no regrets. Ultimately, this is true living and love of self ... from within.
T.F. Hodge
#98. When hints of sadness creep into our soul, we must not flee into happy or distracting thoughts. Pondering the sadness until it becomes overwhelming can lead us to deep change in the direction of our being from self-preservation to grateful worship.
Larry Crabb
#99. Unlike earlier black-power movements that tried to fight or segregate for self-preservation, Black Lives Matter aligns with the dead, continues the mourning, and refuses the forgetting in front of all of us.
Claudia Rankine
#100. When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.
Joseph Campbell
