Ken MacLeod Quotes

All species capable of grasping this fact manage better in the struggle for existence than those which rely upon their own strength alone: the wolf, which hunts in a pack, has a greater chance of survival than the lion, which hunts alone.

Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.

With all our mastery over the powers of Nature we have adhered to the view that the struggle for existence is a permanent and necessary condition of life.

Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.

Lonely's like any other organism; competitive and resourceful in the struggle to perpetuate itself.

You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it.

In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.

The wretched of the earth do not decide to become extinct, they resolve, on the contrary, to multiply: life is their weapon against life, life is all that they have.

It isn't important to come out on top, what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.

Man struggles to survive, not to succumb

The strongest oak of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun.

Survival is the key word to remember—not victory, not conquest, just survival.

You adapt, evolve, compete or die.

I have to act to live.

The weak die out and the strong will survive, and will live on forever

Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.

As regards the celebrated struggle for life, it seems to me for the present to have been rather asserted than proved. It does occur, but as the exception; the general aspect of life is not hunger and distress, but rather wealth, luxury, even absurd prodigality -- where there is a struggle it is a struggle for power.

There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive.

Sometimes that's all life is... One desperate act after another.

We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.

This is the law of the Yukon, that only the strong shall thrive; that surely the weak shall perish, and only the fit survive.

What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in & out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?

There's more to life than just surviving . . . but . . . sometimes just surviving is all you get

We are all fighters, every single person who walks this earth is a fighter, everything that lives. To live is to fight. And we just fight in different arenas.

It is clear that we must embrace struggle. Every living thing conforms to it. Everything in nature grows and struggles in its own way, establishing its own identity, insisting on it at all cost, against all resistance.