Deep Survival Quotes

“Survival is the celebration of choosing life over death. We know we're going to die. We all die. But survival is saying: perhaps not today. In that sense, survivors don't defeat death, they come to terms with it.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“The word 'experienced' often refers to someone who's gotten away with doing the wrong thing more frequently than you have.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“To deal with reality you must first recognize it as such.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“We don't understand the power of nature and the world because we don't live with it. Our environment is designed to sustain us. We are the domestic pets of a human zoo called civilization.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“The sun beams are always there. The trick is in seeing them.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“The world we imagine seems as real as the ones we’ve experienced. We suffuse the model with the emotional values of past realities. And in the thrall of that vision (call it “the plan,” writ large), we go forth and take action. If things don’t go according to the plan, revising such a robust model may be difficult. In an environment that has high objective hazards, the longer it takes to dislodge the imagined world in favor of the real one, the greater the risk. In nature, adaptation is important; the plan is not. It’s a Zen thing. We must plan. But we must be able to let go of the plan, too.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“To survive, you must develop secondary emotions that function in a strategic balance with reason.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“To lose everything at such a glorious eternity is far sweeter than to win by plodding through a cautious, painless, featureless life.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“I am constantly surrounded by a display of natural wonders...It is beauty surrounded by ugly fear. I write in my log that it's a view of heaven from a seat in hell. (survivor after 53 days at sea)”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“Helping someone else is the best way to ensure your own survival. It takes you out of yourself. It helps you to rise above your fears. Now you’re a rescuer, not a victim. And seeing how your leadership and skill buoy others up gives you more focus and energy to persevere. The cycle reinforces itself: You buoy them up, and their response buoys you up. Many people who survive alone report that they were doing it for someone else (a wife, boyfriend, mother, son) back home.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“Everyone who dies out there dies of confusion.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“We think we believe what we know, but we only truly believe what we feel.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“Shit happens, and if we just want to restrict ourselves to things where shit can't happen... we're not going to do anything very interesting.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“The perfect adventure shouldn’t be that much more hazardous in a real sense than ordinary life, for that invisible rope that holds us here can always break. We can live a life of bored caution and die of cancer. Better to take the adventure, minimize the risks, get the information, and then go forward in the knowledge that we’ve done everything we can. No,”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“The maddening thing for someone with a Western scientific turn of mind is that it’s not what’s in your pack that separates the quick from the dead. It’s not even what’s in your mind. Corny as it sounds, it’s what’s in your heart.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“Only 10 to 20 percent of untrained people can stay calm and think in the midst of a survival emergency.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“Knowledge of the sort you need does not begin with information, it begins with experience and perception. But there is a dark and twisty road from experience and perception to correct action.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“Whether a deity is actually listening or not, there is value in formally announcing your needs, desires, worries, sins, and goals in a focused, prayerful attitude. Only when you are aware can you take action.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“(Psychologists have observed that one of the most basic human needs, beginning at birth, is to be gazed upon by another. Mothers throughout the world have been observed spending long periods staring into the eyes of their babies with a characteristic tilt of the head. To be seen is to be real, and without another to gaze upon us, we are nothing. Part of the terror of being lost stems from the idea of never being seen again.)”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have for turning it to use.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“Rigid people are dangerous people.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“If you find yourself in enough trouble to be staring death in the face, you’ve gotten there by a well-worn path.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“The Rules of Life. The first rule we came up with was: Be here now. It’s a good survival rule. It means to pay attention and keep an up-to-date mental model. The second rule was: Everything takes eight times as long as it’s supposed to. That was the friction rule, which travelers in the wilderness will do well to heed.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“Empathy is an important quality for a survivor. Kiley’s desire to aid Meg may have helped her feel less like a victim. It may have given her at least some sense of personal power.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“Yankovich explained the most salient points: “You’re at a quarter mile and someone asks you who your mother is: you don’t know. That’s how focused you are. Okay, call the ball. Now it’s a knife fight in a phone booth. And remember: full power in the wire. Your IQ rolls back to that of an ape.” It sounds as if he’s being a smart-ass (he is), but deep lessons also are there to be teased out like some obscure Talmudic script. Lessons about survival, about what you need to know and what you don’t need to know. About the surface of the brain and its deep recesses. About what you know that you don’t know you know and about what you don’t know that you’d better not think you know. Call it an ape, call it a horse, as Plato did. Plato understood that emotions could trump reason and that to succeed we have to use the reins of reason on the horse of emotion. That turns out to be remarkably close to what modern research has begun to show us, and it works both ways: The intellect without the emotions is like the jockey without the horse.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“Plan the flight and fly the plan. But don’t fall in love with the plan. Be open to a changing world and let go of the plan when necessary so that you can make a new plan. Then, as the world and the plan both go through their book of changes, you will always be ready to do the next right thing.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“the brain reads the state of the body and makes fine adjustments, even while it reads the environment and directs the body in reacting to it. In addition, that process continually reshapes the brain by making new connections. All of this is aimed at one thing only: adaptation, which is another word for survival.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“Emotion is an instinctive response aimed at self-preservation.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

“The true survivor isn’t someone with nothing to lose. He has something precious to lose. But at the same time, he’s willing to bet it all on himself. And it makes what he has that much richer. Days stolen are always sweeter than days given.”
― Laurence Gonzales, Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why