
“To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.”
Source: Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 4
Quoted in Scott MacLeod, "South Africa: Extremes in Black and Whites" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,975037,00.html, Time, March 9, 1992, p. 38
Quoted in "The Mind of Black Africa" (1996) by Dickson A. Mungazi, p. 159
“To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.”
Source: Man for Himself (1947), Ch. 4
"Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians" at Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html
“It is better to live rich, than to die rich.”
April 17, 1778
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III
Remarks Recorded for the Opening of a USIA Transmitter at Greenville, North Carolina (8 February 1963) Audio at JFK Library (01:29 - 01:40) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKWHA-161-010.aspx · Text of speech at The American Presidency Project http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9551
1963
Variant: A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.
“But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.”
Source: Women in Love (1920), Ch. 15
“It's better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear.”
“Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.”
“Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”
This is usually attributed to Emiliano Zapata, but sometimes to Aeschylus, who is credited with expressing similar sentiments in Prometheus Bound: "For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life".
Misattributed
Fragment xxxii.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Fragments