What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.

Each time I stopped I stripped myself of something vitally important. I was, becoming my own enemy! And I can’t tell you how it hurt me when I found that out. “What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.

The most important step a man can take. It’s not the first one, is it?
It’s the next one.

That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.

Many a man can save himself if he admits he's done wrong and takes his punishment.

When in doubt, take the next step.

A man is saved no faster than he gets knowledge.

How could he save the life of a man who’d murdered his in laws and then attempted to murder him?

And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working – bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming – all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned – reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less.

There are moments in life when a man retreats defensively, when he must give ground, when he must surrender less important positions in order to protect the more important ones. But should it come to the very last, the most important one, at this point a man must halt and stand firm if he doesn't want to begin life all over again with idle hands and a feeling of being shipwrecked.

Every man must find out for himself in what particular fashion he can be saved.

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

Remember that every man at times stumbles and must be helped up: if he's down, you cannot carry him. The only way in which any man can be helped permanently is to help himself.” — Theodore Roosevelt

When all else fails, men turn to reason.