John Dryden Quotes

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

Just like an animal, when you want to survive, you don't think anymore.

All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost - the most legitimate - passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.

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

Self-preservation is the first law of nature.

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.

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.

It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

Politics is applied biology.

There are times when fear is good. It must keep its watchful place at the heart's controls.

To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.

It is unfair to blame man too fiercely for being pugnacious; he learned the habit from Nature.

Mammals are sentient beings that want to live and are afraid to die. Evolution vouchsafed us all with an instinct to survive, reproduce and flourish.

We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.

Viewed narrowly, all life is universal hunger and an expression of energy associated with it.

Human nature is such that people are born with a love of profit If they follow these inclinations, they will struggle and snatch from each other, and inclinations to defer or yield will die.

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

When your life is being threatened there's an instinctive urge to fight. You fight for the time you have, for your relationships.

If I'm walking down the riverbank, and a man is drowning, even if I don't know how to swim very well, I feel this urge that the right thing to do is to try to save that person. Evolution would tell me exactly the opposite: preserve your DNA. Who cares about the guy who's drowning?

A man's own safety is a god that sometimes makes very grim demands.

People are violent by nature. That’s why we rule the earth; we beat the crap out of everyone else.

The first inclination which an animal has is to protect itself

Nature has no compassion. Nature accepts no excuses and the only punishment it knows is death.

Fear is a good thing. Fear is going to lead you to take action.