survival

“For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.”

She survived it.  She was able to survive it because she did not believe in suffering.  She faced with astonished indignation the ugly fact of feeling pain, and refused to let it matter.  Suffering was a senseless accident, it was not part of life as she saw it.  She would not allow pain to become important.  She had no name for the kind of resistance she offered, for the emotion from which the resisstance came; but the words that stood as its equivalent in her mind were:  It does not count- it is not to be taken seriously.  She knew these were the words, even in the moments when there was nothing left within her but screaming and she wished she could lose the faculty of consciousness so that it would not tell her that what could not be true was true.  Not to be taken seriously- an immovable certainty within her kept repeating- pain and ugliness are never to be taken seriously.

A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions.

Change is difficult but often essential to survival.

THE SUM OF THE WHOLE MATTER IS THIS - OUR CIVILIZATION CANNOT SURVIVE MATERIALLY UNLESS IT BE REDEEMED SPIRITUALLY.

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

. . . You ask, What is our policy? I will say; It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory - victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

It may be that we shall, by a process of sublime irony, have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.

Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive degradations and despairs which otherwise must engulf us.

To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.