A Survivor

Perhaps it or whatever was used to create is ages ago only meant to use it for a small specific purpose, cleaning one planet, or for a weapon of genocide, etc, and they were meant to die afterwards but they endured, reproduced, genetically hid themselves in the black goo and in doing so proved to be nigh immortal as even in goo form they are still alive just lying dormant to rise again...maybe he meant something like that, that over the ages they have endured, lasting while other races and creatures have came and gone and went extinct this nightmare has endured and has proven to be beyond extinction??

I dont know, could be something like that....what are everyone elses thoughts?? I like this topic good questions Farlander!!  

The Company didn't know about the Alien (unless Covenant changes this). They knew about a signal and a potentially dangerous lifeform and wanted a specimen.

Ash's line about "survivor" means precisely that; it survives.  It came from an egg of a purportedly ancient ship with a toxic atmosphere, gestated inside a host of a species it's likely never encountered before, then adapted to its new environment and efficiently picked off any threats to its continued survival.

The "delusion of morality" is an comparison to the humans on the crew of which Ash is not a part.  These particular humans are returning ore from a planet they've mined presumably because they've mined everything there is to mine on Earth.  The point being humans won't let anything get in the way of their continued survival, whether it's destroying another species or ecosystem, or killing their rivals for resources, but we pretend we have a more evolved mentality.

The Alien has no such compunctions.

This is actually quite intriguing. Order 937.... Ash did know more than he was telling. He knew about the Alien and what it is and how it works. For all we know he probably had knowledge of all things that has occured since Prometheus, over awakening to Covenant. Sooo... That opens up for some pretty wild speculations, no?

Very wild.  Since Ridley Scott has said the Company didn't know about the Alien and its potential when they issued SO 937, and this was born out subsequent films.

@S.M and @Parkerparrot To say "the Company didn't know about the Alien" and "ASH didn't know about the Alien" means the same thing? As far as we know, the synthetics got uploaded with the amount of data of the older versions, so the people in charge of the Company could not know about it, but maybe Ash could know every single information about the specimen... (!?)

The Company knew about a transmission that likely mentioned a hostile lifeform.

@SM

You're right. I had to dig through "the Vault" to refresh my memory. The company did not know about  anything else than the transmission and they send the Nostromo to check it out. End of story. Guess I got a bit carried away...

Nah, it happens a lot. And may even change when Covenant comes out.  Ridley has a penchant for changing his mind when he comes across what he thinks is a better idea.

I hope we find out in the episode after Awakening. It needs to tell us about those crucial moments on Thedus (leading into Alien) where Ash was parachuted in etc.