Survival - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

On Earth, everywhere in the system, the necessities of survival have made enemies of life forms even closely kin.

- JackWilliamson, The Cometeers (1936)

I said you were a survival type. You are - except for one thing. You don't want children. From a biological standpoint that is as contra-survival as a compulsion to suicide.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon (1942)

Survival of the race is the first duty of every Ethical man and woman.

- Judith Merril, ''Survival Ship'' (1953)

A scientifically verifiable theory of morals must be rooted in the individual's instinct to survive - and nowhere else! - and must correctly describe the hierarchy of survival, note the motivations at each level, and resolve all conflicts.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers (1959)

Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.

- Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

When civilization became a matter of standing in lines, the British had kept queue, and so had replaced the survival of the fittest with the survival of the fair-minded.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''Nine Lives,'' revised (1970)

Q: I noticed a moment of hesitation back there when he said that the drive to survive is as potent in the intellect as in the blood.Why was that? A: He was being very careful not to say what he says in private: that the drive to survive is as strong between the ears as it is between the legs.

- Hank Davis, ''To Plant a Seed'' (1972)

His people taught themselves to resist a difficult land by refusing to cry, refusing to mourn, refusing to laugh. They denied themselves grief, and allowed themselves little joy, but they survived.

- Vonda N. McIntyre, ''Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand'' (1973)

The law of existence is struggle - competition - elimination of the weak - a ruthless war for survival.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974)

The world is sickened of attempts to save it. The world is saving itself now in the only way it has or ever can - by small, brave individual efforts at recovery now that the storm's over. It will take centuries. Institutions have never done it and never will.

- Edgar Pangborn, ''The Children's Crusade'' (1974)

Uniqueness always perishes. Nature works by overproducing each species; uniqueness is a fault, a failure of nature. For survival there should be hundreds, thousands, even millions of one species, all interchangeable - if all but one dies, then nature has won. Generally it loses. But himself. I am unique, he realized. So I am doomed. Every man is unique and hence doomed.

- Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny, Deus Irae (1976)

We are barbarians.With survival the only moral touchstone, we show what we are.We kill in order to live. Our final decency is the ability to see what we are and exercise some rational control over it. The world's survivors will be the ruthless, not the holy meek.

- George Turner, Drowning Towers (1987)

Mankind. That word should have new meaning for all of us today.We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore.We will be united in our common interest. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom. Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution . . . but fromannihilation.We're fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice we will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!

- Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, Independence Day (film, 1996)

Staying alive is as good as it gets.

- Alex Garland, 28 Days Later (film, 2002)