80+ Survival Quotes to Motivate & Empower the Survivor in You
Survival Quotes That Will Bring Toughness Out in You
“Scars are not signs of weakness, they are signs of survival and endurance.” ―Rodney A. Winters
“Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.” ―Rollo May
“Survivors aren’t always the strongest; sometimes they’re the smartest, but more often simply the luckiest.” ―Carrie Ryan
“We need to be fit and ready for anything that might come our way.” ―Aaron B. Powell
“To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.” ―George Orwell
“Survival is not about being fearless. It’s about making a decision, getting on and doing it.” ―Bear Grylls
“Connections with other people affect not only the quality of our lives but also our survival.” ―Dean Ornish
“Fear is always there; it’s a survival instinct. You just need to know how to manage it.” ―Jimmy Chin
“Sustainability is the key to our survival on this planet and will also determine success on all levels.” ―Shari Arison
“The key to the survival of liberty in the modern world is the embrace of multiple identities.” ―Timothy Garton Ash
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” ―Leon C. Megginson
“The man who goes afoot, prepared to camp anywhere and in any weather, is the most independent fellow on earth.” ―Horace Kephart
“Survival can be summed up in three words – never give up. That’s the heart of it really. Just keep trying.” ―Bear Grylls
“In a world where change is inevitable and continuous, the need to achieve that change without violence is essential for survival.” ―Andrew Young
“You have to seed internal disruptors. You need sources of internal disruption. They don’t guarantee your survival, but you have got to try.” ―Anand Mahindra
“I fight on emotions. When I don’t fight on emotions, I don’t fight well. I fight on emotion, because I’m in for survival.” ―Tito Ortiz
“The ability to sympathize with those around us seems crucial to our survival, and it’s connected to the mirroring functions of the brain.” ―Jay Parini
“Survival requires us to leave our prejudices at home. It’s about doing whatever it takes, and ultimately those with the biggest heart will win.” ―Bear Grylls
“Survival is not just a physical thing. It’s a constant mental affair. So, I kind of really draw a lot of power from that word.” ―Parvathy
“In the game of life, less diversity means fewer options for change. Wild or domesticated, panda or pea, adaptation is the requirement for survival.” ―Cary Fowler
“The human being is very resourceful. When you fight for survival, you don’t think much; you just do. If you think too much, you sink.” ―Frank Lowy
“Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one’s life away.” ―Yann Martel
“Bad things happen. And the human brain is especially adept at making sure that we keep track of these events. This is an adaptive mechanism important for survival.” ―David Perlmutter
“At this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved.” ―Nina Simone
“I’ve come to learn from my own experiences and those around me that it’s not about survival of the fittest but about who can adapt the best to change.” ―Natalya Neidhart
“Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.” ―Bill Cosby
“To have endured horrors, to have seen the worst of humanity and have your life made unrecognizable by it, to come out of all that honorable and brave, that was magical.” ―Ransom Riggs
“One thing you have to realize from now on is that it doesn’t matter if this is a dream or not. Survival depends on what you do, not what you think.” ―Rebecca McKinsey
“Most of us can hide our greatest hurts and longings. It’s how we survive each day. We pretend the pain isn’t there, that we are made of scars instead of wounds.” ―Leigh Bardugo
“Fears, insecurities, and the need to please can rule our lives. Our society is economically and socially set up for us to live under these pressures in order to maintain its control and survival.” ―Tara Stiles
“Fear is a part of life. It’s a warning mechanism. That’s all. It tells you when there’s danger around. Its job is to help you survive. Not cripple you into being unable to do it.” ―Jim Butcher
“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
“Survival is the celebration of choosing life over death. We know we’re going to die. We all die. But survival is saying: perhaps not today. In that sense, survivors don’t defeat death, they come to terms with it.” ―Laurence Gonzales
“There’s nothing wrong with struggle. Anytime I look back at a difficult phase of my life and see what grew out of it, the creative survival tactics, I think that the good is way better than the bad.” ―Esperanza Spalding
Short Survival Quotes
“Only the strong survive.”
“Survival is triumph enough.” ―Harry Crews
“Survival is nothing more than recovery.” ―Dianne Feinstein
“Credibility is a basic survival tool.” ―Rebecca Solnit
“Rule of survival: Pack your own parachute.” ―T.L. Hakala
“Survival often feels like an indignity.” ―Guillermo Del Toro
“The strong survive, but the courageous triumph.” ―Michael Scott
“Self-preservation is the first principle of our nature.” ―Alexander Hamilton
“Surviving means being born over and over again.” ―Erica Jong
“What does not kill us makes us stronger.” ―Friedrich Nietzsche
“When you’re in survival mode, you numb yourself.” ―Clemantine Wamariya
“In a mad world, only the mad are sane.” ―Akiro Kurosawa
“Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.” ―Frank Herbert
“But part of surviving is being able to move on.” ―Alexandra Bracken
“Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age.” ―Adlai Stevenson
“The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool.” ―Jane Wagner
“For Harmony. A chance at life. To fight on other days.” ―Janet Morris
“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” ―Dinos Christianopoulos
“Knowledge is power, community is strength and positive attitude is everything.” ―Lance Armstrong
“If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf.” ―Nikita Khrushchev
“The weak fall, but the strong will remain and never go under.” ―Anne Frank
“You have to have an attitude that nothing’s gonna stop me.” ―Melissa De Sousa
“A scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.” ―Chris Cleave
Survival Quotes and Sayings
“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.” ―Dalai Lama
“Self-preservation, nature’s first great law, all the creatures, except man, doth awe.” ―Andrew Marvell
“All I’m trying to do is not join my ancestral spirits just yet.” ―Joshua Nkomo
“The condition of man… is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.” ―Thomas Hobbes
“Every day I run scared. That’s the only way I can stay ahead.” ―John H. Johnson
“The faster you can signal for rescue, the faster you get out of that situation.” ―Joseph Teti
“We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.” ―Winston Churchill
“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” ―Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Tis the last rose of summer Left blooming alone; all her lovely companions Are faded and gone.” ―Thomas More
“In truth, we exist and survive, not because of the ego, but in spite of it.” ―David R. Hawkins
“Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual’s instinct for self-preservation.” ―Albert Einstein
“We are survival machines — robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” ―Richard Dawkins
“Nature’s stern discipline enjoins mutual help at least as often as warfare. The fittest may also be the gentlest.” ―Theodosius Dobzhansky
“A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with, a man is what he makes himself.
“It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts.”
“Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.” ―Bruce Lee
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.” ―Clarence Darrow
“In spite of everything that was done to me and my race, in spite of the adversity and the bitter moments, again we rise.” ―Maya Angelou
“Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.” ―Charles Darwin
“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.” ―Winston Churchill
“You don’t know if you’re going to be rescued in a day or a month; gotta prepare for the long haul; gotta make the place your home.” ―Matt Graham
“Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.” ―Robertson Davies
“The consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass.” ―Herman Melville
“Perhaps catastrophe is the natural human environment, and even though we spend a good deal of energy trying to get away from it, we are programmed for survival amid catastrophe.” ―Germaine Greer
“And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.” ―Andrew Carnegie
“Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.” ―Sun Tzu
“Resilience is the maintenance of high levels of positive affect and well-being in the face of adversity. It is not that resilient individuals never experience negative affect, but rather that the negative affect does not persist.” ―Richard J. Davidson
“Nobody is stronger, nobody is weaker than someone who came back. There is nothing you can do to such a person because whatever you could do is less than what has already been done to him. We have already paid the price.” ―Elie Wiesel
“Once one determines that he or she has a mission in life, that’s it’s not going to be accomplished without a great deal of pain, and that the rewards in the end may not outweigh the pain –if you recognize historically that always happens, then when it comes, you survive it.”