On Survival:

“In real terms, knowledge is leadership, common sense is duty, and the practical observance of survival laws is discipline; any departure into the realm of orthodox authority at this stage is specious nonsense.” p 258-9

“If any single civilized factor in a castaway’s character helps survival, it is a well-developed sense of the ridiculous. It helps the castaway to laugh in the face of impossible situations and allows him, or her, to overcome the assassination of all civilized codes and characteristics which hitherto had been guidelines of life.” p 260

On Education:

“I  made a mental note that statistics unless based on local data, were a dead duck, and that a theoretical education could only supply a man with a theoretical living, the thirst that we suffered at that moment being anything but theoretical.” p 72

“At twenty-two, through no fault of his own, he was the product of an eight-year educational system which gave its students little opportunity to learn the basic tenets of physical existence and thrust them into life, unpractical, self-opinionated, and with a fund of prepacked knowledge that is about as useless as a heifer in a hayfield when lives are at stake.” p 105

- Survive the Savage Sea by Dougal Robertson