Quotes about death

A collection of quotes on the topic of life, sadness, pain, disease.

Best quotes about death

„Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.“

— Bob Marley Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician 1945 - 1981

„A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.“

— Joseph Stalin General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1879 - 1953

Variants: One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic.
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
When one dies, it is a tragedy. When a million die, it is a statistic.
In Портрет тирана (1981) (Portrait of a Tyrant), Soviet historian Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko attributes the following version to Stalin: "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics." This is the alleged response of Stalin during the 1943 Tehran conference when Churchill objected to an early opening of a second front in France.
In her review "Mustering Most Memorable Quips" of Konstantin Dushenko's 1997 Dictionary of Modern Quotations (Словарь современных цитат: 4300 ходячих цитат и выражений ХХ века, их источники, авторы, датировка), Julia Solovyova states: "Russian historians have no record of the lines, 'Death of one man is a tragedy. Death of a million is a statistic,' commonly attributed by English-language dictionaries to Josef Stalin."
This quotation may originate from "Französischer Witz" (1925) by Kurt Tucholsky: "Darauf sagt ein Diplomat vom Quai d'Orsay: «Der Krieg? Ich kann das nicht so schrecklich finden! Der Tod eines Menschen: das ist eine Katastrophe. Hunderttausend Tote: das ist eine Statistik!»" ("To which a Quai d'Orsay diplomat replies: «The war? I can't find it so terrible! The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!»")
Another possible source or intermediary may be the concluding words of chapter 8 of the 1956 novel The Black Obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque: "Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik." ("But probably the reason is that one dead man is death—and two million are only a statistic." 1958 Crest Book reprint)
Mary Soames (daughter of Churchill) claims to have overheard Stalin deliver a variant of the quote in immediate postwar Berlin (Remembrance Sunday Andrew Marr interview BBC 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hP2tpw9XEw
See also Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist, 1939: "Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."
In an interview given for the 1983 three-part documentary Der Prozeß by Norddeutscher Rundfunk on the Third Majdanek trial, Simon Wiesenthal attributes the quote to the unpublished auto-biography of Adolf Eichmann. According to Wiesenthal, Eichmann had been asked by another member of the Reich Main Security Office during WWII what they should answer would they be questioned after the war about the millions of dead Jews they were responsible for, to which Eichmann according to his own testimony had replied with the quote.
Misattributed
Variant: The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.

„A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.“

— Martin Luther King, Jr. American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement 1929 - 1968

Variant: If a man hasn’t found something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
Source: The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

„If you're really a mean person you're going to come back as a fly and eat poop.“

— Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994

As quoted in Monk Magazine (1992-10).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

„A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.“

— Franz Kafka author 1883 - 1924

Letter to Oskar Pollak http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001062.php (27 January 1904)
Variant translations:
If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why do we read it? Good God, we also would be happy if we had no books and such books that make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. What we must have are those books that come on us like ill fortune, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us.
What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
Variant: A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
Context: I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?... we need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

„I've got the guts to die. What I want to know is, have you got the guts to live?“

— Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

„It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.“

— Alexandre Dumas, book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

„People are strange, they neither wish to live nor die.“

— Epictetus philosopher from Ancient Greece 50 - 138

„No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for.“

— Martin Luther King, Jr. American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement 1929 - 1968

„Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.“

— Isaiah Berlin Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas 1909 - 1997

All quotes about death

Total 6088 quotes death, filter:

„I been by myself for a long time I just wish that I could know if I was on your mind Runnin' out of time I just wish that I could know if you were by my side On the day I die, would you even cry?“

— Lil Peep American rapper 1996 - 2017

Song About U

Time, Cry

„My mama always used to tell me: 'If you can't find somethin' to live for, you best find somethin' to die for.“

— Tupac Shakur rapper and actor 1971 - 1996

Variant: My Mama used to tell me if u can’t find something to live for, you best find something to die for.
Source: Resurrection, 1971-1996

„Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland.“

— Richard Ramirez American serial killer 1960 - 2013

Statement to reporters after his death sentences, taken from The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/07/richard-ramirez-night-stalker-dies

„When the snow fall
and the white winds blow,
the lone wolf dies
but the pack survives.“

— George Raymond Richard Martin American writer, screenwriter and television producer 1948

Wolf

„Naruto, it's nice that you removed the poison so spiritedly, but you'll bleed to death if you lose any more blood… Seriously….“

— Hatake Kakashi, book Naruto

„I don't think anybody's necessarily ready for death. You can only hope that when it approaches, you feel like you've said what you wanted to say. Nobody wants to go out in mid-sentence.“

— Johnny Depp American actor, film producer, and musician 1963

Hope, Feeling, Thinking

„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.“

— Charles Bukowski American writer 1920 - 1994

"The Meaning of Life: The Big Picture", Life Magazine (December 1988)
Interviews

Love, God, War, Education

„That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.“

— H.P. Lovecraft, book The Nameless City

Variant: That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
Source: The Nameless City

Lie, Dead

„If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life“

— Pablo Neruda Chilean poet 1904 - 1973

Love, Life

„Thousands of people who say they "love" animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs— and the journey to get there— before finally leaving their miserable world, only too often after a painful death.“

— Jane Goodall British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist 1934

The Ten Trusts (2003), p. xv

Love, Pain, People, World

„We’re gonna stay together until we die, I’m sure of it.“

— Freddie Mercury British singer, songwriter and record producer 1946 - 1991

Context: You know something? There's been a lot of rumors lately about a certain band called Queen. The rumors are that... The rumors are that we're gonna split up. What do you think? [audience replies "No!"] [Pointing to his posterior] They're talking from here! [audience replies "Yes"! ] My apologies, but I say what I want. You know what I mean? So forget those rumors. We’re gonna stay together until we die, I’m sure of it. I keep — I must tell you — I keep wanting to leave, but they won’t let me. Also, I suppose we’re not... We're not bad for four aging queens, are we? Really, what do you think?

"Queen: Live at Wembley" (1986), shortly before performing "Who Wants To Live Forever." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GNJ1SQpxFI

„Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment, for even the very wise cannot see all ends.“

— John Ronald Reuel Tolkien British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works 1892 - 1973

Life

„Someday death will take us to another star.“

— Vincent Van Gogh Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890) 1853 - 1890

Star

„Death is the greatest form of love.“

— Charles Manson American criminal and musician 1934 - 2017

Love

„Did you ever stop to notice
All the children dead from war?
Did you ever stop to notice
This crying earth, these weeping shores?“

— Michael Jackson American singer, songwriter and dancer 1958 - 2009

Earth Song
HIStory: Past, Present & Future, Book I (1995)

War, Children, Cry, Dead

„The immortality of the soul is that there is no death without life and there is no life after death. Life goes on.“

— Mwanandeke Kindembo 1996

Soul, Life

„To the angel of death, we are all like chess pieces on the chessboard.“

— Mwanandeke Kindembo 1996

Angels

„When a liberal is abused, he says, ‘Thank God they didn’t beat me.’ When he is beaten, he thanks God they didn’t kill him. When he is killed, he will thank God that his immortal soul has been delivered from its mortal clay.“

— Vladimir Lenin Russian politician, led the October Revolution 1870 - 1924

God, Soul

„We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.“

— Ernesto Che Guevara Argentine Marxist revolutionary 1928 - 1967

As quoted in Wise Guys : Brilliant Thoughts and Big Talk from Real Men (2005) by Allan Zullo, p. 36

„Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.“

— Anaïs Nin writer of novels, short stories, and erotica 1903 - 1977

Love, Error, Nature, Betrayal

„It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.“

— Paul Watson Canadian environmental activist 1950

Life, Money, People, World

„I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death“

— Nas American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur 1973

N.Y. State of Mind
On Albums, Illmatic (1994)

Sleep

„Trapped in life, only escape I know is death.“

— E.M.S Nigerian rapper, singer and record producer 1995

"Hidden"

Life

„Such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives… What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt.“

— Sophie Scholl White Rose member 1921 - 1943

As quoted by Else Gebel, in letter to Robert Scholl (November, 1946). Original German text. http://www.mythoselser.de/texts/scholl-gebel.htm

„Finally, the benefits of knowing thyself are —You won’t be clouded by the love of life, flatterers can’t arouse your mind, good/bad will appear to be the same before your eyes, pleasure and pain will lose their meanings, the sense of sins and death will vanish away and you will end up having the sense of immortality.“

— Mwanandeke Kindembo 1996

Pain, Pleasure, Appearance, Sense

„When I die I'm going to dance first in all the galaxies… I'm gonna play and dance and sing.“

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross American psychiatrist 1926 - 2004

Singing, Dance

„Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without hating each other to death?“

— Emil M. Cioran, book History and Utopia

History and Utopia (1960)

Hate

„I've seen my own death in dreams like this and it's helped me appreciate life more. I've also seen my own life in dreams and it's helped me appreciate death more.“

— Marilyn Manson American rock musician and actor 1969

Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Life, Dreams, Help

„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.
Misattributed

„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

„I paint flowers so they will not die.“

— Frida Kahlo Mexican painter 1907 - 1954

Flowers, Painting

„If you're born poor it's not your fault, but if you die poor it's your fault.“

— Bill Gates American business magnate and philanthropist 1955

Quoted in various publications, without any further sourcing. The quote is dubious in view of the Gates Foundation's public mission, "to lift people out of hunger and extreme poverty." Gates was born to an affluent family.
Misattributed

„Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.“

— Robert A. Heinlein American science fiction author 1907 - 1988

Stupidity, Universe

„Paint what you like and die happy“

— Henry Miller American novelist 1891 - 1980

Painting, Happiness

„A judgment is being visited upon the Jews that, while barbaric, is fully deserved by them. The prophecy which the Führer made about them for having brought on a new world war is beginning to come true in a most terrible manner. One must not be sentimental in these matters. If we did not fight the Jews, they would destroy us. It's a life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus.“

— Joseph Goebbels Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister 1897 - 1945

Dated 27 March 1942
Diary excerpts

Life, War, World, Fight

„The Christian land, has lost his sword and shields.
( It is believed that Skanderbeg said on his death )“

— Mehmed II Ottoman sultan 1432 - 1481

„We must live, you used to say, as if we were never going to die. - Didn't you know that's how everyone lives, including those obsessed with Death?“

— Emil M. Cioran Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911 - 1995

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

„I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear.“

— Witold Pilecki World War II concentration camp leader and resistor 1901 - 1948

After the announcement of the death sentence.
Source: Bartłomiej Kuraś, Witold Pilecki – w Auschwitzu z własnej woli, „Ale Historia”, w: „Gazeta Wyborcza”, 22 kwietnia 2013.

Life, Fear, Feeling, Joy

„What is man’s life but love, love of self;
Man is dust, dust as his passion, dust as the beloved.Death, it is your great act of piety for man –
You take him to your house or he’d be left to himself.Death is a covenant between the lover and the beloved;
Death is a secret wedlock between being and non-being.Death harbors the hidden port of life’s ocean;
Death is helpless and a vision of beauty to itself.Death is the only witness of my life and your grace,
And O strange lord, of night and the crescent.“

— Ghani Khan Pakistani poet 1914 - 1996

Death, st. 8-12

Love, Life, Secret, Beauty

„The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.“

— Emil M. Cioran Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911 - 1995

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

„An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.“

— Avicenna medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher 980 - 1037

As quoted in Familiar Medical Quotations (1968) by Maurice B. Strauss

„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.
2008

Pain, Democracy, Imagination, Lying

„Truly, I wish I were dead.
She was weeping when she left me,
and said many things to me, and said this:
"How much we have suffered, Sappho.
Truly, I don't want to leave you."“

— Sappho ancient Greek lyric poet -630 - -570 BC

Stanley Lombardo translations, Frag. 11

Suffering, Dead

„Time is the architect of fate,
fleeting omen, pure phantom
in enchanting light of absence,
and our life the play of love and death,
only love will never die,
because In love no longer ‘thou’ and ‘I’ exist,
only the blossom of sacred unity.“

— Alexis Karpouzos 1967

Source: https://hellopoetry.com/alexis-karpouzos/

Time, Fate, Light, Love

„Death is our best motivator in life. The idea of dying or not seeing the sun tomorrow will keep you up on your toes.“

— Mwanandeke Kindembo 1996

Sun, Motivation, Idea, Life

„What I wanted to express very clearly and intensely was that the reason these people had to invent or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear. Fear of life and fear of death.“

— Frida Kahlo Mexican painter 1907 - 1954

Life, God, People, Fear

„The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.“

— Ludwig Wittgenstein Austrian-British philosopher 1889 - 1951

Life, Question, Problem

„I'm not afraid of death because I don't believe in it.
It's just getting out of one car, and into another.“

— John Lennon English singer and songwriter 1940 - 1980

Cars

„Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance is the death of knowledge.“

— Alfred North Whitehead English mathematician and philosopher 1861 - 1947

Knowledge

„The mountains were his masters. They rimmed in life. They were the cup of reality, beyond growth, beyond struggle and death. They were his absolute unity in the midst of eternal change.“

— Thomas Wolfe, book Look Homeward, Angel

Source: Look Homeward, Angel

Life, Mountain, Reality, Change

„A coward dies a thousand times, a soldier dies but once.“

— Tupac Shakur rapper and actor 1971 - 1996

Time

„Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.“

— Tupac Shakur rapper and actor 1971 - 1996

Variant: Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.

Life, Loss

„It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.“

— Marcus Aurelius, book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Fear

„You should never, ever be understood completely. That's like the kiss of death, isn't it? It's a full stop. I don't ever think you should put full stops on thoughts. They change.“

— John Lydon English singer, songwriter, and musician 1956

Kiss, Thinking, Change

„We're reaching for death
on the end of a candle
We're trying for something
that's already found us“

— Jim Morrison lead singer of The Doors 1943 - 1971

„We must conquer life by living it to the full, and then we can go to meet death with a certain prestige.“

— Aleister Crowley, book Diary of a Drug Fiend

Source: Diary of a Drug Fiend

Life

„I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.“

— Charles Bukowski American writer 1920 - 1994

Hope

„Strength is Life, Weakness is Death.
Expansion is Life, Contraction is Death.
Love is Life, Hatred is Death.“

— Swami Vivekananda Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher 1863 - 1902

Love, Life

„I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death.“

— Lin Yutang Chinese writer 1895 - 1976

Epilogue, p. 328
My Country and My People (1935)

Life, Wisdom, Age, Spring

„Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" --- and find that there is no death.“

— Eckhart Tolle German writer 1948

Life, Secret

„Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.“

— Sylvia Plath, book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Life, Lie, Peace, Beauty

„I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death!“

— Anne Frank victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary 1929 - 1945

5 April 1944
The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)
Original: (nl) Ik moet iets hebben naast man en kinderen waar ik me aan wijden kan! O ja, ik wil niet zoals de meeste mensen voor niets geleefd hebben. Ik wil van nut of plezier zijn voor de mensen, die om mij heen leven en die mij toch niet kennen.
Variant: I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met.

People

„People in general are scared to death of the war and all the exhibition have been a failure, because the rich - don't want to buy anything“

— Frida Kahlo Mexican painter 1907 - 1954

War, People, Failure

„If you die you’re completely happy and your soul somewhere lives on. I’m not afraid of dying. Total peace after death, becoming someone else is the best hope I’ve got.“

— Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994

Peace, Hope, Soul, Happiness

„I'd rather die like a man, than live like a coward“

— Tupac Shakur rapper and actor 1971 - 1996

„HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)“

— Terry Pratchett, book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

Life, Universe

„If in life we are surrounded by death, then in the health of our intellect we are surrounded by madness.“

— Ludwig Wittgenstein Austrian-British philosopher 1889 - 1951

Life, Health, Madness

„Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.“

— Frank Zappa American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer 1940 - 1993

'Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)
Roxy & Elsewhere (1974)
Variant: Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny

Dead

„Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies within us while we live.“

— Norman Cousins American journalist 1915 - 1990

Quoted in History of Sikh Struggles (1989) by Gurmit Singh, p. 189.

Life, Loss

„I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.“

— Madeline Miller, book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

World, Way

„If Paulus's army had capitulated before the end, the Russians would have had the advantage of withdrawing forces against Paulus and against the southern front, where I had only two Romanian armies. Therefore, the resistance of the Sixth German Army, even to the death of the last man, was necessary.“

— Erich von Manstein German general 1887 - 1973

To Leon Goldensohn (14 June 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

„The kabalists say that a man is not dead when his body is entombed. Death is never sudden; for, according to Hermes, nothing goes in nature by violent transitions. Everything is gradual, and as it required a long and gradual development to produce the living human being, so time is required to completely withdraw vitality from the carcass. "Death can no more be an absolute end, than birth a real beginning. Birth proves the preexistence of the being, as death proves immortality," says the same French kabalist“

— Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, book Isis Unveiled

Eliphas Levi
Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume I, Chapter XIII

Birth, Nature, Time, Dead

„There is no one whose death I have not longed for, at one moment or another.“

— Emil M. Cioran Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911 - 1995

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

„If, I say now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfill the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods… then I would be fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. …this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men — that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.“

— Socrates classical Greek Athenian philosopher -470 - -399 BC

29a–b
Alternate translation: "To fear death, is nothing else but to believe ourselves to be wise, when we are not; and to fancy that we know what we do not know. In effect, no body knows death; no body can tell, but it may be the greatest benefit of mankind; and yet men are afraid of it, as if they knew certainly that it were the greatest of evils."
Plato, Apology

Wisdom, Men, God, World

„I have killed, robbed, and injured too many white men to believe in a good peace. They are medicine, and I would eventually die a lingering death. I had rather die on the field of battle.“

— Sitting Bull Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man 1831 - 1890

Recorded by Charles Larpenteur at Fort Union in 1867. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 73.

Men, Peace

„[Fascism] was an explosion against intolerable conditions, against remediable wrongs which the old world failed to remedy. It was a movement to secure national renaissance by people who felt themselves threatened with decline into decadence and death and were determined to live, and live greatly.“

— Oswald Mosley British politician; founder of the British Union of Fascists 1896 - 1980

Excerpt from My Life by Oswald Mosley (1968), Ch.16.

People, World

„In theory, it matters little to me whether I live as whether I die; in practice, I am lacerated by every anxiety which opens an abyss between life and death.“

— Emil M. Cioran Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911 - 1995

The New Gods (1969)

Life

„I tried at that time to relieve the Sixth Army, of which I was supreme commander, above Paulus, by counterattacks - but it was not possible. I gave the order finally for the Sixth Army to break out, but then Paulus said it was too late and not possible. Hitler did not want the Sixth Army to break out at any time, but to fight to the last man. I believe that Hitler said if the Sixth Army tried to break out, it would be their death.“

— Erich von Manstein German general 1887 - 1973

To Leon Goldensohn (14 June 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Time, Fight

„Any person who pursues human rights in Iran must live with fear from birth to death, but I have learned to overcome my fear.“

— Shirin Ebadi Iranian lawyer, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient 1947

From 1999 interview.
Noted in the October 2003 BBC News profile of Ebadi. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3181992.stm (retrieved Oct. 15, 2008)

Fear, Birth, Learning, Personality

„Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.“

— Haruki Murakami, book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter One

Fate, Imagination, Sense, Change

„The noblest people are those despising wealth, learning, pleasure and life; esteeming above them poverty, ignorance, hardship and death.“

— Diogenes of Sinope ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy -404 - -322 BC

Stobaeus, iv. 29a. 19
Quoted by Stobaeus

Life, People, Pleasure, Learning

„I write and leave behind me this letter at St. Petersburg. I feel that I shall leave life before January 1st. I wish to make known to the Russian people, to Papa, to the Russian Mother and to the children, to the land of Russia, what they must understand. If I am killed by common assassins, and especially by my brothers the Russian peasants, you, Tsar of Russia, have nothing to fear, remain on your throne and govern, and you, Russian Tsar, will have nothing to fear for your children, they will reign for hundreds of years in Russia. But if I am murdered by boyars, nobles, and if they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled with my blood, for twenty-five years they will not wash their hands from my blood. They will leave Russia. Brothers will kill brothers, and they will kill each other and hate each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no noblers in the country. Tsar of the land of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which will tell you that Grigory has been killed, you must know this: if it was your relations who have wrought my death then no one of your family, that is to say, none of your children or relations will remain alive for more than two years. They will be killed by the Russian people…I shall be killed. I am no longer among the living. Pray, pray, be strong, think of your blessed family.“

— Grigori Rasputin Russian mystic 1869 - 1916

Grigory Rasputin in a letter to the Tsarina Alexandra, 7 Dec 1916

Life, Hate, Children, People

„One who rushes madly after inordinate desire, runs the risk of encountering destruction and death.“

— Ali, book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

„The only thing that can kill me is death, that's the only thing that can ever stop me, is death, and even then my music will live forever.“

— Tupac Shakur rapper and actor 1971 - 1996

1990s, Prison interviews and interrogations (1995)

Music

„I think putting thieves to death is not lawful; and it is plain and obvious that it is absurd and of ill consequence to the commonwealth that a thief and a murderer should be equally punished“

— Thomas More, book Utopia

Source: Utopia (1516), Ch. 1 : Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best State of a Commonwealth
Context: I think putting thieves to death is not lawful; and it is plain and obvious that it is absurd and of ill consequence to the commonwealth that a thief and a murderer should be equally punished; for if a robber sees that his danger is the same if he is convicted of theft as if he were guilty of murder, this will naturally incite him to kill the person whom otherwise he would only have robbed; since, if the punishment is the same, there is more security, and less danger of discovery, when he that can best make it is put out of the way; so that terrifying thieves too much provokes them to cruelty.

Law, Thinking