“Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.”
Variant translation: Death is softer by far than tyranny.
Source: Oresteia (458 BC), Agamemnon, line 1364
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Aeschylus119
ancient Athenian playwright -525–-456 BCRelated quotes
“I am not a fate worse than death, dammit!”
Lois McMaster Bujold Captain Vorpatril's Alliance
Source: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance
Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism
[Baqir Sharīf al-Qurashi, The life of Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, Wonderful Maxims and Arts, 2005]
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Speech to the thirtieth anniversary of the Junior Imperial League in Kingsway Hall (19 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 17-18.
1926
Context: You have to realize that these years in which we are living, the years into which we are entering, are going to be, as no years before have been, the real testing-time of democracy... We in this country may make a fearful mess of it; and if we make a mess of it, we shall get something much worse— we shall get a tyranny of some kind or other. I don't know what form of tyranny it may be. It may be the communist tyranny; it may be tyranny from the other end. But if you cannot evolve a sound and sane democracy, that will be the fate of the country.
“To me death is better than the defensive.”
Alexander Suvorov (1730–1800) Russian military commander
Quoted in W. Lyon Blease, "Suvorof," 1926.
“Better be killed than frightened to death.”
Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) English writer
Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds (1865) ch. 39
Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN
Quoted in "Major Campaign Speeches of Adlai E. Stevenson" (1952), Random House. Republished in the New York Times, "Books of the Times", by Charles Poore, April 20, 1953, p. 23
“Death with honor is better than a life of degradation.”
Husayn ibn Ali (626–680) The grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib
Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.44 p. 192
General Quotes
“Better death than to be appointed Superior General.”
Saint Nimatullah Kassab (1808–1858) Lebanese Maronite monk and saint
