We're more RESILIENT. Takes a LOT to destroy a human spirit.

Better from evils, well foreseen, to run,
Than perish in the danger we may shun.

Because they could assess themselves, the Europeans were better equipped to cope with changes than we were.

If we humans annihilate ourselves, mammalian genes are rich enough to replace us with another, maybe wiser race within a few million years. Perhaps descendants of coyotes or raccoons, creatures too adaptable ever to need refuge in arks. Too tough to be wiped out by any calamity the likes of us create.

Human beings are better equipped to cope with disaster and hardship than they are with unvarying security, but as long as security is the highest value in a community they can have little opportunity to decide this for themselves. It is agreed that Englishmen coped magnificently with a war, and were more cheerful, enterprising and friendly under the daily threat of bombardment than they are now under benevolent peacetime, when we are so far from worrying about how many people starve in Africa that we can tolerate British policy in Nigeria.

Any environmental biologist or statistician will tell you that humankind’s best chance of long-term survival occurs with a global population of around four billion.

I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.

in the long run the practice of solidarity proves much more advantageous to the species than the development of individuals endowed with predatory inclinations.

Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply.

How fortunate that science hasn't cracked human immortality. It's a great blessing that we can outlive old wars. And old warriors.

[T]he chances of survival are best when there is no anxiety to survive, and [...] the greatest power is available to those who do not seek power and who do not use force. To be anxious to survive is to wear oneself out, and to seek power and to use force is to overstrain one's system. One is best preserved by floating along without stress.

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

It is by our power to suffer, above all, that we are of more value than the sparrows.

What makes us brave isn't lacking the good sense to be afraid; it's looking back at what we've lived through and seeing if we faced it well.