Samuel Smiles Quotes

When a lion doesn't get its prey, it remains hungry. When the prey saves himself, he has not won, but has saved his life.

Today the world is a big jungle.

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 each new day in Africa, a gazelle wakes up knowing he must outrun the fastest lion or perish. At the same time, a lion stirs and stretches, knowing he must outrun the fastest gazelle or starve. It's no different for the human race. Whether you consider yourself a gazelle or a lion, you have to run faster than others to survive.

You adapt, evolve, compete or die.

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

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.

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

At the banquet table of nature, there are no reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you keep what you can hold. If you can't take anything, you won't get anything, and if you can't hold anything, you won't keep anything. And you can't take anything without organization.

We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.

That competition and the struggle for existence is the mechanism behind this state of perpetual change.

Life was not fair. If you wanted something you had to take it. Before someone else took it from you. Neatly dissected down to its essence, life was one long series of lily pad hoppings. The quick and the resourceful were able to adapt and survive; all others were simply crushed as a more nimble creature landed on the lily pad they had occupied for too long.

He that will not work according to his faculty, let him perish according to his necessity: there is no law juster than that.

Journalism is a Darwinian process.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

You'd just die if you put your head to the grindstone.

Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.

Fishes live in the sea, as men do on land: the great ones eat up the little ones.

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.

My main recollection is of the work I had to do in order to eat.

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.

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.

For science, the end of the evolution struggle is simply represented by 'survival.' As for the means to that end, apparently anything goes. Darwinism leaves humanity without a moral compass.

Unfortunately this earth is not a fairy-land, but a struggle for life, perfectly natural and therefore extremely harsh.

The packaged food business environment is very Darwinian. You're fighting for survival every year; you evolve and grow or you die. It's really that simple.