“Death isn't funny. Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us — us humans — death is so sad that we must laugh at it.”

—  Robert A. Heinlein, book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

Last update Nov. 2, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Death isn't funny. Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us — us humans — death is so sad that we mu…" by Robert A. Heinlein?
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Robert A. Heinlein557
American science fiction author 1907–1988

Related quotes

Charlotte Perkins Gilman photo

“Death? Why all this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition to life, not an evil.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Christopher Marlowe photo

“If we say that we have no sin,
We deceive ourselves, and there's no truth in us.
Why then belike we must sin,
And so consequently die.
Ay, we must die an everlasting death.”

Christopher Marlowe The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

Source: Dr. Faustus

“maybe death
isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

Charles Bukowski photo

“We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

"The Meaning of Life: The Big Picture", Life Magazine (December 1988)
Interviews
Context: For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stonewritten. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

Paul McCartney photo

“Sadness isn't sadness. It's happiness in a black jacket. Tears are not tears. They're balls of laughter dipped in salt. Death is not death. It's life that's jumped off a tall cliff.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Source: Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics, 1965-1999

“Plato shows us how Socrates goes to his death in complete peace and composure. The death of Socrates is a beautiful death. Nothing is seen here of death’s terror. Socrates cannot fear death, since indeed it sets us free from the body.. . . Death is the soul’s great friend. So he teaches; and so, in wonderful harmony with his teaching, he dies.”

Oscar Cullmann (1902–1999) French theologian

A Better Hope for the Soul, The Watchtower magazine, 8/1 1996.

Maureen Johnson photo

“It was almost funny. Life seemed downright accidental in its brevity, and death a punch line to a lousy joke.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Name of the Star

Antonio Machado photo

“Death is something we shouldn't fear because, while we are, death isn't, and when death is, we aren't.”

Antonio Machado (1875–1939) Spanish poet

George Holmes Howison photo

“But so long as human nature is what it is, so long as we are by essence prepossessed in favour of our freedom and yearn for a life that may put death itself beneath our feet, and with death imperfection and wrong, so long will our nature reluctate, so long will it even revolt, at the prospect of having to accept the doctrine of pantheism; so long shall we instinctively draw back from that vast and shadowy Being which, be it conscious or unconscious or simply the Unknowable, must for us and our highest hopes be verily the Shadow of Death”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Modern Science and Pantheism, p.77-8

Related topics