“People often ask me what it’s like to live with bodyguards. The short answer is that it’s better than being dead.”
Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 9, “America” (p. 113)
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali56
Dutch feminist, author 1969Related quotes
“Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”
Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker
“It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers.”
James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright
"The Scotty Who Knew Too Much", The New Yorker (18 February 1939)
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat
Before the U. S. Senate Committee on Patents (29 January 1886)
“Better a live donkey than a dead lion.”
Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922) Anglo-Irish polar explorer
Quoted in [Moss, Stephen, Captain Scott centenary: Storm rages around polar explorer's reputation, The Guardian, 28 March 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/mar/28/captain-scott-antarctic-centenary-profile]
“Better a live dog than a dead lion.”
Stefano Guazzo (1530–1593) Italian writer
Più tosto can vivo che leone morto.
Della Morte, p. 525.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 394.
“A living dog is better than a dead lion.”
Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois
Walden (1854)
Context: A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.<!--pp.366-367