Tom Waits Quotes

Even if they don't know it, everyone has the instinct to survive.

Self-preservation, nature's first great law, all the creatures, except man, doth awe.

When I did 'Bumble-ardy,' I was so intensely aware of death. Eugene, my friend and partner, was dying here in the house when I did 'Bumble-ardy'. I did 'Bumble-ardy' to save myself. I did not want to die with him. I wanted to live, as any human being does.

The first inclination which an animal has is to protect itself

I thought, I'm going to die. And, thinking that, I was determined to live.

A living creature develops a destructive impulse when it wants to destroy a source of danger... The original motive is not pleasure in destruction... I destroy in a dangerous situation because I want to live and do not want to have any anxiety. In short, the impulse to destroy serves a primary biological will to live.

The intelligence of the mind can't think of any reason to live, but it goes on anyway because the intelligence of the cells can't think of any reason to die.

Fear is a healthy instinct, not a sign of weakness. It is a natural self-defense mechanism that is common to felines, wolves, hyenas, and most humans. Even fruit bats know fear, and I salute them for it. If you think the world is weird now, imagine how weird it would be if wild beasts had no fear.

I actually don't think that there is a connection between the survival instinct and a hunger for immortality.

Dogs will eat till they die. Cats will leave food in the dish, incomprehensible to a dog.

Survival," I said softly. "It's selfish, and it's dark, and we've always been a species willing to do anything to satisfy our needs. Individuals have morals. Mobs have appetites.

You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.

You can always avert throwing yourself in front of an oncoming train. There is something that just pulls you away - and it has pulled me away, because I'm not dead yet - just at the brink of impact. Sometimes I have been really grazed by that train.

A species has to become pretty intellectually advanced in order to grasp the concept of death in the abstract, and to dream up the idea of immortality. Long before that (in evolutionary terms) all species with brains have the survival instinct in some form. So, I am just saying that there are many existent proofs of species that have one, but not the other.

I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live.

When we're threatened, it's very easy to appeal to our basic natures.

Every other creature on the planet is doing its best. Only human beings hesitate about that.

It is notorious that the desire to live increases as life itself shortens.

Not wanting to die was another universal constant, it seemed.

Survival is my primary instinct...it's out of my control. It's stronger than me. It's an outside force, a voice that says 'do this for your life or it will devour you.'

How Instinct varies in the grov'ling swine.

Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life.

A hungry dog believes in nothing but meat.

All fear violence, all are afraid of death.