survival statistics Quotes

I grew up in northern Minnesota on 40 acres of wooded land 20 miles from the nearest town, and so the wilderness was home. It was not an unsafe place. I had that advantage. But there are so many representations of the wilderness being dangerous. You know, depictions of wild animals attacking people. It's like, "No, we kill those animals in far greater numbers than they kill us."

I had serious reservations about putting my son in the public schools in my area. I have a tremendous amount of fear for the future of my boy. He's nine-and- a-half and dark-skinned. By the time he's 12 or 13, who knows who he's going to be identifying with in these days when you get shot down for wearing expensive Nikes to school...I've heard that if a Latino makes it to 19 years of age, he has a good chance of surviving into adulthood. Up until then, you don't know.

Here is the secret to surviving one of these [airplane] crashes: Be male. In a 1970 Civil Aeromedical institute study of three crashes involving emergency evacuations, the most prominent factor influencing survival was gender (followed closely by proximity to exit). Adult males were by far the most likely to get out alive. Why? Presumably because they pushed everyone else out of the way.

There was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five . . . so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards.

People think about this idea that there's 122 million kids that are alive that would not be if that fatality rate had stayed at the 1990 level, that's 122 million families.

I actually believe we are the superior gender. Why are we superior? Statistically, we outlive men by a good 10 years. No one should underestimate the power of nagging - it's on par with nuclear weapons.

When I saw that show Lost I learned something. Other than one sort of big dude if you're in an airplane crash only models survive. So you know sit next to somebody pretty, but anyhow.

I'm not resigned, but I'm realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.

I often laugh and say I should go down to the Department of the Interior and register as an endangered species. I'm a gay man over 60 and I'm alive.

Most serious plane crashes are survivable. There's a sense that, 'Oh, if we go down, that's it, it's out of my hands.' And that's just statistically not true. I have more optimism and more faith that my own actions can make a difference.