Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

A survival tale peels away the niceties and comforts of civilization. Suddenly, all the technology and education in the world means nothing. I think all of us wonder while reading a survival tale, 'What would I have done in this situation? Would I have made it?'

Never before have self-suffiency and education been so important, and they are virtually inseparable from survival.

I do have a side of me that would just love to be stuck in the woods and have to stick it out and be really resourceful.

Surviving is not something you need to learn. You don't need to learn survival skills; you have them already. That's why we're here, all of us, because it's a game of survival anyway.

People will do amazing things to ensure their survival.

Cats know, comin' out of four, they better be standin' on it, else they'll be standin' in it.

The great majority of people are calm, resourceful, altruistic or even beyond altruistic, as they risk themselves for others. We improvise the conditions of survival beautifully.

We have been crafted by disaster to push out to the utmost horizon to find out what's on the other side of it. That's in our nature. What's also in our nature is a profound love and connection to our children and our communities. Those two things are very much at conflict with one another at certain moments.

Biology always beats will power.

When I'm in 'Man vs. Wild' mode, it's not pleasure. Every sensor is firing and I'm on reserve power all the time and I'm digging deep - and that's the magic of it as well, and that's raw and it's great.

The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and to beget.

Man is born to eat.

I mostly wrote 'Thursday's Child' to explore the idea of a wild child - a creature who lived much as humans used to live, when our needs were simple and our worlds were small.

For a long time all I wanted for Christmas were books about outdoor survival. I was convinced that the woods were calling me. I camped a lot, I took classes. At 18, I told myself if I don't live in the woods by myself by the time I'm 25, I have failed.

The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.

Sheep, like people, are ungovernable when hungry.

I think walking is a little more primal than art-making.

Thanks to my training in Balali village, I am rough and tough.

My biggest inspiration has been life for me. Basic survival has been my biggest teacher. Surviving in Mumbai for so many years has been a huge ordeal.

Most people are weak and frightened, and run from anything which could be upsetting. Most people, also, are takers and not givers.

The men who attempt to survive, not by means of reason, but by means of force, are attempting to survive by the method of animals.

Self-preservation is the first principle of our nature.

There is nothing to which men, while they have food and drink, cannot reconcile themselves.

It may not be irrelevant to note that even very modest forms of life, like earthworms, dung beetles and fiddler crabs, have no trouble identifying the real problems they must deal with if they are to survive.

I can't remember exactly the first thing I wrote, but one of the stories, was about a pilot whose plane crashed on a desert island, and the only other life on the island was a brown cow with yellow spots. The cow had... to survive, had taught itself to eat and get nutriments from sand. I guess, I've always been interested in adaptability and taking whatever life hands you and running with it.