Quotes about death

A collection of quotes on the topic of death.

„The death of one is a tragedy, but death of a million is just a statistic.“

— Marilyn Manson American rock musician and actor 1969
Being from Manson's Fight Song of Holy Wood, this is actually a quote from German writer Erich Maria Remarque, also often misattributed to Josef Stalin.

„Death only grasps; to live is to pursue, —
Dream on! there 's nothing but illusion true!“

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Poet, essayist, physician 1809 - 1894
Context: Dream on! Though Heaven may woo our open eyes, Through their closed lids we look on fairer skies; Truth is for other worlds, and hope for this; The cheating future lends the present's bliss; Life is a running shade, with fettered hands, That chases phantoms over shifting sands; Death a still spectre on a marble seat, With ever clutching palms and shackled feet; The airy shapes that mock life's slender chain, The flying joys he strives to clasp in vain, Death only grasps; to live is to pursue, — Dream on! there 's nothing but illusion true! "The Old Player" (1861), in Songs in Many Keys (1862).

Dreams

„If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.“

— Martin Heidegger German philosopher 1889 - 1976

Life

„One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the S. S. men. We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and nobody else. What happens to a Russian and a Czech does not interest me in the least. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture: otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be tough and heartless where it is not necessary, that is clear. We, Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When somebody comes up to me and says: 'I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them,' then I have to say: 'You are the murderer of your own blood, because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood....' Our concern, our duty, is our people and our blood. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the S. S. to adopt this attitude towards the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians....“

— Heinrich Himmler Nazi officer, Commander of the SS 1900 - 1945
The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)

Women, Men, Children, People

„No art is superior to another one, but every art looks for expertise and perfection. This is life, which continues; this is why there is no death. There is continuation. There is no silence. There is a continuation of thought.“

— Marcel Marceau French mime and actor 1923 - 2007
Interview The Lantern (5 April 2001)

Life, Art, Silence, Perfection

„Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.“

— Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems

Life, Music, Dead

„Is war perhaps nothing else but a need to face death, to conquer and master it, to come out of it alive -- a peculiar form of denial of our mortality?“

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross American psychiatrist 1926 - 2004

War

„Any comparison between the military dictatorship and democracy can only come from those who do not value the Brazilian democracy. (...) I am proud to have lied. Lying under torture is not easy. In the face of torture, a person with dignity lies. Enduring torture is very difficult (...) The pain is unbearable; you can not imagine how. I am proud to have lied, because I saved my comrades from the same torture and from death.“

— Dilma Rousseff 36th President of Brazil 1947
Responding http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tiyezo1fLRs to Senator José Agripino Maia - former member of ARENA, ruling party of the military dictatorship - in a Senate hearing, May 7. He suggested that, for having lied when she was interrogated by the political police, she could also have been lying about the leak of data of Fernando Henrique Cardoso's personal expenditures.

Pain, Democracy, Imagination, Lying

„To cause at will the birth and death of matter would be man's grandest deed, which would give him the mastery of physical creation, make him fulfill his ultimate destiny.“

— Nikola Tesla Serbian American inventor 1856 - 1943
Context: According to an adopted theory, every ponderable atom is differentiated from a tenuous fluid, filling all space merely by spinning motion, as a whirl of water in a calm lake. By being set in movement this fluid, the ether, becomes gross matter. Its movement arrested, the primary substance reverts to its normal state. It appears, then, possible for man through harnessed energy of the medium and suitable agencies for starting and stopping ether whirls to cause matter to form and disappear. At his command, almost without effort on his part, old worlds would vanish and new ones would spring into being. He could alter the size of this planet, control its seasons, adjust its distance from the sun, guide it on its eternal journey along any path he might choose, through the depths of the universe. He could make planets collide and produce his suns and stars, his heat and light; he could originate life in all its infinite forms. To cause at will the birth and death of matter would be man's grandest deed, which would give him the mastery of physical creation, make him fulfill his ultimate destiny.

Birth