Top 100 Quotes About Self Preservation
#1. Anything that grows is, by definition, alive. Washington, D.C. was no exception. As a living organism, the Federal Government's number one job was self-preservation. Any threat to its existence had to be dealt with.
Brad Thor
#2. 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
#4. That form of the instinct of self-preservation with which we guard everything that is best in ourselves ...
Marcel Proust
#6. I didn't know how to tell him that I hadn't lost the instinct to survive and yet at the same time I didn't feel much need for self-preservation, that somehow there was a distinction between the two.
Jane Hamilton
#7. How silly then to imagine that the human mind, which is formed of the same elements as divine beings, objects to movement and change of abode, while the divine nature finds delight and even self-preservation in continual and very rapid change.
Seneca.
#8. As we become aware of our own unavoidable termination, we become aware of the fear-emotion. And I think that, as copulation tends towards self-preservation, all fear tends towards a comprehension of the final ending.
Stephen King
#9. In the Darwinian world, self-preservation is the ultimate shiny good.
N.D. Wilson
#10. Should I take anything?" I asked, as Shamus slammed the trunk shut.
"A healthy sense of self-preservation would be good," he said.
Devon Monk
#11. With Lake I was a child running out into the street after a shiny rainbow beach ball. The woman robbed me of all self-preservation by simply existing in my world.
Jewel E. Ann
#12. She had a kind heart, though that is not of much use when it comes to the matter of self-preservation.
Penelope Fitzgerald
#13. When you're surrounded by stupidity, self-preservation isn't a sin.
Meljean Brook
#14. Doing things for yourself (self-preservation) are ok in in small doses and when necessary but over-burdening you life with your own self will weaken your heart, soul connectivity with others
Paul Isaacs
#16. The human brain has a natural ability, inherent in its mechanism, to work on many levels, in a process of constant promptings, in a type of self-preservation.
If only humans understood ...
Most ignore it.
Amanda Dubin
#17. Claire knew she was in control of her actions, she could choose to fight or complain. Her plan was for self-preservation until she was free. This had been a good old-fashioned thunderstorm, loud and boisterous but no real damage.
Aleatha Romig
#18. We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
#19. Man's rights are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.
Samuel Adams
#20. But I figured every girl on the planet had found herself wishing she had a free pass inside a man's mind at one point or another. Maybe it was self-preservation that we didn't have such powers. It might be holy-crap creepy in there.
Erin McCarthy
#21. Her cowardice had been re-branded as self-preservation, and she was grateful for it.
Jayne Lockwood
#22. The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation - until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.
Woodrow Wilson
#23. This passion because it is so strong, must destroy in order to be contained within the limits of self-preservation.
Sabina Spielrein
#24. If my goal is simply to survive the journey, then I'm not on the journey in the first place.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#25. Writing is the thing that sustains me and keeps me going. It is a form of self-preservation for me.
Bei Dao
#26. My brother has absolutely no sense of self-preservation or survival instinct," Eli said. "He has no idea we're out here. We could be silver-eating, flesh-regenerating, vampire zombies, and when we busted through the door to eat his brilliant brain, he'd look up and say, 'Huh?
Faith Hunter
#27. There is no cowardice in removing yourself from a wildly unhealthy and unwinnable situation . . . You shouldn't feel like you have to play . . . you don't owe anyone anything. You don't have to be available to everyone. You can stop.
Scaachi Koul
#28. What is life but God's daring invitation to a remarkable journey? And what is human nature but a staunchly inbred tendency toward self-preservation? And because of the rigidly paradoxical nature of these things, the road of life is seldom trod beyond a few scant steps.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#29. It must not be thought that the cowardly feeling of caution and uneasy self-preservation is innate in the English character. It is the consequence of a corpulence derived from wealth and of the training of all thoughts and passions for acquisitiveness.
Alexander Herzen
#30. Self-preservation has a tendency to lead to poverty.
Jim Rohn
#31. I've always had a very binge and then cleanse approach to casual sex for that very reason. We long for an intimate connection, but that longing makes us feel vulnerable. Therefore, we guard our hearts for self-preservation, which barricades that intimacy we are longing for.
Maggie Young
#32. But I will write in spite of everything, absolutely; it is my struggle for self-preservation.
Franz Kafka
#33. Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation? (CIA Document, Project ARTICHOKE, MORI ID 144686, 1952)
As cited by Dr Ellen P. Lacter, p57
Orit Badouk Epstein
#34. Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.
Audre Lorde
#35. The individualism of current economic theory is manifest in the purely self-interested behavior it generally assumes. It has no real place for fairness, malevolence, and benevolence, nor for the preservation of human life or any other moral concern.
Herman E. Daly
#36. Save your shaming for the girl, Doctor. If I cared for human approval, I would have been dead long ago." He turned and started wading into the swamp. "Time is passing. I, for one, have no intention of remaining here for your betrayer to bring back the soldiers and their guns.
Paolo Bacigalupi
#37. 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
#38. When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.
Joseph Campbell
#39. Anger is a legitimate feeling, one often designed for self-protection.
Kimberlee Roth
#40. I know one thing about the place I came from,' I say. 'We didn't eat dessert.'
'Then you came from a horrible and backward place and must stay here out of self-preservation.
Josin L. McQuein
#41. I should coldly, clinically think of myself and stop worrying about other people, as though I'm a necessary woman, indispensable to their happiness and well-being. Self-preservation is the first law. I must start trying to obey the law.
Helen Van Slyke
#42. That was the strength of Ellysetta's weave. Bright, unyielding,indefatigable love. Love that did not know surrender. Love that did not understand limitations or even basic self-preservation. Love that would batter itself to death before giving in to defeat.
C.L. Wilson
#43. A good leader must have the wisdom to know when a pursuit is no longer worthy of being pursued - a time when the losses of the present must be accepted - and cut - to preserve the gains and providence of the future.
A.J. Darkholme
#44. Alone again. But not lonely. This was my fate. I'd reached a point so low that I actually stopped wishing for relief. Hope was dangerous. Giving up was self-preservation. I was better off trusting no one.
Riley Jean
#45. When we find the courage to look inside without allowing the filters of self-protection and self-preservation to blind us, it opens up a vista to personal growth that we never thought possible.
Steve Saccone
#46. Conflate a narcissistic instinct for self-preservation with moral superiority.
Dennis Lehane
#47. Oh, I've no sense of self-preservation," Reynard replied easily. "That's what I depend on you for.
Martha Wells
#48. He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.
Evelyn Waugh
#49. Though it is a painful fact that most Negroes are hopelessly docile, many of them are filled with fury, and the unctuous coating of flattery which surrounds and encases that fury is but a form of self-preservation.
William Styron
#50. I always thought fainting showed an inherent weakness of character, but I understood it now. It was an act of self-preservation. Confronted by emotion too extreme to handle, the body shuts down to keep from running around like a chicken with its head cut off, potentially injuring itself.
Karen Marie Moning
#51. Beauty should never lower its guard around Appetite.
Shay Caroline
#52. As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.
Diogenes
#53. When we stop thinking primarily about ourselves, of our wants, our image and our own self-preservation, we undergo a transformation of truly heroic proportions.
Jose N. Harris
#54. It's all about self-preservation now, dying doesn't scare me, it's whatever he has planned for me before it comes to the end that does. After all, it takes more courage to suffer than to die. And I'm not about to give in easily.
Danielle Dickson
#55. No one could have called Mr. Standen quick-witted, but the possession of three sisters had considerably sharpened his instinct of self-preservation.
Georgette Heyer
#56. Training was one thing, reality another, and no one could be sure that the ancient human instincts of self-preservation would not take over in an emergency.
Arthur C. Clarke
#57. Self love is the instrument of our preservation.
Voltaire
#58. I was scared before every battle. That old instinct of self-preservation is a pretty basic thing, but while the action was going on some part of my mind shut off and my training and discipline took over. I did what I had to do.
Audie Murphy
#59. It didn't occur to him that she might have chosen to remain this way. That where he saw reserve and loneliness, Cassandra saw self-preservation and the knowledge that it was safer when one had less to lose.
Kate Morton
#61. Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant.
Ann Coulter
#63. Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation.
Viktor E. Frankl
#64. Without parlaying with the renunciation of the world, a person must establish a means to live in harmony with the uncertainties of a chaotic world.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#65. No matter which way you dice it, self-preservation is selfish.
Keith Houghton
#66. I accepted the official line so completely that even now, after all I've read and heard, I still have a minute hope that our lives weren't entirely wasted. It's the self-preservation instinct at work.
Svetlana Alexievich
#67. 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 thereof.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#68. Self-preservation and self-denial: the basis of all political economy.
Lord Acton
#69. Could the motive be nothing more than simple self-preservation? When you lose the instinct yourself, it's hard to remember how powerful it is for everyone else. He felt himself starting to smile.
Joe Abercrombie
#71. I do not for a moment suggest that Japan should be unmindful of acquiring modern weapons of self-protection. But this should never be allowed to go beyond her instinct of self-preservation. She must know that the real power is not in the weapons themselves, but in the man who wields those weapons
Rabindranath Tagore
#72. If Todd [Willingham] was guilty of anything, it was just his self-preservation. He got up and ran out of the house and then thought about the children after the fact.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#73. Where's your sense of adventure? It died under mysterious circumstances. My sense of self-preservation found the body, but assures me it has an airtight alibi. -Captain Tagon & Captain Andreyasn
Howard Tayler
#74. This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.
Voltaire
#75. Instantaneous forgiveness can bring longstanding self-preservation, not to mention a cheaper Ralph's bill on Rolaids.
Ace Antonio Hall
#76. An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life.
Jose Marti
#77. Man's strongest instinct is not sex or self-preservation. it's to level the playing field.
Ron Brackin
#78. To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation.
Derrick Jensen
#79. Marine training is essentially a psychological battle against the instinct for self-preservation.
Nathaniel Fick
#80. Denise's first thought on seeing her blood stain Spade's lips was "oh shit". Then the fire that leapt into his gaze and the way he dominated her mouth in his next kiss made her decide that self-preservation was overrated.
Jeaniene Frost
#81. My inner wolf seeks to destroy the one I love for reasons of self-preservation. For the only cure to free my soul is to be killed, in an act of true love, by the one who loves me most..
Bree Despain
#82. The gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#83. The very wish to be right, down to its subtlest form of logical reflection, is an expression of the spirit of self-preservation which philosophy is precisely concerned to break down.
Theodor W. Adorno
#84. She didn't dare expose her heart the way she'd exposed her body.
Nicki Elson
#85. Loyalty," he stated, ineffably gentle. "A quality honoured by sages and fools, by which humankind finds the courage to trample the reflex for self-preservation.
Janny Wurts
#86. Those who cannot dance, should not dance.
Cian Beirdd
#87. You can't be everybody's friend, you can't save the world, I learned this word: self-preservation. Once you do that, you can be friends with people, but how would you be a friend to anybody if you're not a friend to yourself.
Mike Tyson
#88. As a society of unbelief, Western culture is devoid of a sense of journey, of adventure, because it lacks belief in much more than the cultivation of an ever-shrinking horizon of self-preservation and and self-expression.
Stanley Hauerwas
#89. Certain motherfuckers think they can fuck with my shit, but you can't kill the Rooster. You might can fuck him up some times, but, bitch, nobody kills the motherfucking Rooster. You know what I'm saying?
David Sedaris
#90. Self-forgiveness is a daily practice of the humble, strong and mentally sane. It is an intentional preservation of inner-peace and a reflection of a healthy self-concept.
Shannon Tanner
#91. Fear has made them sloppy. The world teeters at a precipe. All scared to take a step in case they put a foot into empty air. The instinct of self-preservation. It can destroy a man's efficiency.
Joe Abercrombie
#92. It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do with our self-preservation; and that, no doubt, is why the expression of it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives.
Wallace Stevens
#93. People like Brian and me don't lose contact with our parents because we don't care; we lose contact with them to survive. We never stop loving, and we never lose hope that our loved ones will change. Rather, we are forced, either by wisdom or by the law, to take the path of self-preservation.
J.D. Vance
#94. I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation.
Julian Barnes
#95. According to Dickens, the first rule of human nature is self-preservation and when I forgive him for writing a character as pathetic as Oliver Twist, I'll thank him for the advice.
Melina Marchetta
#96. Secrets and lies ... Everyone in the world deals with these every day of their lives.
To protect themselves. To protect someone else. It is all in the way that you look at the
situation.
Lacey Thorn
#97. Divide the constant tide and random noisiness of energetic flow, with conscious recurring moments of empty mind, solitude, gratitude and deep ... slow ... breathing. Of this, the natural law of self-preservation demands.
T.F. Hodge
#98. Careers, children and homemaking all come above preserving your appearance. Self-preservation is at the bottom of the scale.
Trinny Woodall
#99. In short, forbidden fear is merely concerned with self-preservation. It does not take God's glory into account. On the contrary, it actually desires the removal of what it perceives as dangerous, meaning it desires the removal of God.
John Flavel
#100. To condemn spontaneous and delightful occupations because they are useless for self-preservation shows an uncritical prizing of life irrespective of its content.
George Santayana
