Survival Risk Quotes

There are two problems for our species' survival - nuclear war and environmental catastrophe - and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly.

Obviously, my perception of the world is one where humans are a threat to our survival.

People talk about human intelligence as the greatest adaptation in the history of the planet. It is an amazing and marvelous thing, but in evolutionary terms, it is as likely to do us in as to help us along.

What's at risk [in 100 years] if we do not take action, truly is the survival of civilization as we know it... Literally that is the case. We have seen global warming so far of just a little bit less than one degree Celsius and look at what's happened. Superstorm Sandy. Boulder Colorado. All these fires. Hurricane Irene one year before.

Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving.

The swim at Deception Island was by far the hardest swim I've ever done. Antarctica is a very unforgiving environment. If you don't train properly, you'll die.

...to be injured on this tundra would lead to a quick and painful death—or at the very least abject humiliation before the popping flashes of the tourist season's tail end, which was slightly less painful than a painful death, but lasted longer.

We're [humans] running great risks of doing things that will not be good for us. The cost can be very high indeed if we reach the point where we can't adapt to our own increasingly rapid adaptations. We run the risk of early extinction. So this certainly isn't a triumphalist story, but it is trying to get at what, in the very long run, leads to the amazing creatures that we are.

It occurred to me that if I did not handle the crash correctly, there would be no survivors.

Since the majority of the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean, not to mention much of the world's protein, it is not an exaggeration to say that when our oceans' health declines, our very survival is at risk.

The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenseless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenseless against ourselves.

We need to support our future instead of undermining human survival. Let's do it.

The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.

Plants are tricky. Many are edible, but one false mouthful and your dead

If the bears don't get you, it's home.

I know of nothing you can sell where you can make a greater profit than drugs—if you survive.

They urged me to take up winter quarters at the forks of the Platt, stating that if I attempted to advance further until spring, I would endanger the lives of my whole party.

I sort of feel that climate change will be solved by science. I just feel instinctively that we will find a way of saving ourselves. But I am less confident that we won't destroy ourselves in other ways.

With the nuclear threat we know that if sufficient weapons are used, human civilization - all of humankind - could be extinguished literally by "nuclear winter." So we have to see ourselves as part of the ultimate human group, just as we have to do with global warming.

Running around in the grass near an unsecured structure and a bunch of trees is a good way of taking yourself out of the gene pool.

Eat bread. You don't know if it's been polluted. Drink water, you don't know whether it's been polluted. So living is a test.

If the crop of any one year was all, a man would have to cut his throat every time it hailed.