Quotes about death
page 24

Kurien Kunnumpuram photo
Thomas Browne photo
Ray Comfort photo
Aron Ra photo

“I mean it; the Bible-god of western monotheism is just like that horrible kid. Who would want to be trapped in a house with an indomitable telepathic despot and have to guard your thoughts –or be voluntarily mindless- and endure that existence forever and ever? Religion doesn’t want to talk about life either. They hate practically everything that goes on in life. They want to talk about death and pretend that THAT is life. And those of us who know life, live life, and love life, they accuse of being dead already. Every aspect of their world-view is upside-down or backwards -as DogmaDebate brilliantly illustrated. What these religionists preach actually diminishes the very meaning of life. Humans tend to value most that which is rare and fleeting. Such is life. The more you have of anything, the less valuable it is. They’re claiming immortality for eternity, rendering the value of life infinitely worthless. They sell their imaginary after-life as if it is sooo much better than this period of discomfort we have to endure before we achieve paradise. Having to toil in this fallen, sin-corrupted, dead-and-damned world. They hate existence itself so much that they actually long for the end-of-days, and only seem to get happy when they think Armageddon is upon us.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Fukkenuckabee http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2012/12/21/fukkenuckabee/ (December 21, 2012)

Miguel de Unamuno photo

“And above all, we must feel and act as if an endless continuation of our earthly life awaited us after death; and if it be that nothingness is the fate that awaits us we must not, in the words of Obermann, so act that it shall be a just fate.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis

T.S. Eliot photo

“Unreal city,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.”

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 60 et seq.

This is a reference to Dante's Inferno, Canto III, lines 55-57

André Breton photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“The titan is tired. We Americans have our own tyrants to tackle. We no longer want to defend to the death borders not our own—be they in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, wherever. And we don't need our friends looking to us to do so.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Titan is Tired,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=599 WorldNetDaily.com, April 29, 2011.
2010s, 2011

Charles Kingsley photo

“Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever
One grand, sweet song.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

A Farewell http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1191.html (1856), st. 2,

Richard Holt Hutton photo
Georges Seurat photo
Linus Torvalds photo

“Is "I hope you all die a painful death" too strong?”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Linus to the hardware manufacturers that refuse to release the specifications of their hardware so they could operate with the Linux kernel.
Linus Torvalds talks future of Linux, 2007-08-22, Torvalds, Linus, 2007-08-22, 2007-08-25, http://web.archive.org/web/1/apcmag.com/7012/linus_torvalds_talks_about http://apcmag.com/7012/linus_torvalds_talks_about,
2000s, 2007

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Alveda King photo
Ron White photo
Bill Engvall photo
Karel Appel photo

“The wastelands belong to my youth [c. 1930's]. When I was young I played in the outskirts of the city - watching the cranes at the harbour. There was no law but garbage, grass and wildflowers like boys and girls, rough, hot and sexual and full of hidden pleasures. Life and death are overlapping in the wastelands like in my paintings.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Appel's quote is referring to his youth in Amsterdam, in the outskirts and the ports of the Dutch city
Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), pp. 75-77 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Wilfred Thesiger photo
Edward Young photo
Henry Hazlitt photo

“Let us begin with the simplest illustration possible: let us, emulating Bastiat, choose a broken pane of glass.A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker’s shop. The shopkeeper runs out furious, but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers, and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it. How much does a new plate glass window cost? Fifty dollars? That will be quite a sum. After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business? Then, of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $50 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $50 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor.Now let us take another look. The crowd is at least right in its first conclusion. This little act of vandalism will in the first instance mean more business for some glazier. The glazier will be no more unhappy to learn of the incident than an undertaker to learn of a death. But the shopkeeper will be out $50 that he was planning to spend for a new suit. Because he has had to replace a window, he will have to go without the suit (or some equivalent need or luxury). Instead of having a window and $50 he now has merely a window. Or, as he was planning to buy the suit that very afternoon, instead of having both a window and a suit he must be content with the window and no suit. If we think of him as a part of the community, the community has lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being, and is just that much poorer.The glazier’s gain of business, in short, is merely the tailor’s loss of business. No new “employment” has been added. The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier. They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor. They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made. They see only what is immediately visible to the eye.”

Economics in One Lesson (1946), The Broken Window (ch. 2)

J.M.W. Turner photo

“Dear Jones.. [I] give you some account of.... the last sad ceremonies paid yesterday to departed talent gone to that bourne from whence no traveller returns. Alas, only two short months Sir Thomas followed the coffin of Dawe to the same place. We then were his pall-bearers. Who will do the like for me, or when, God only knows how soon; my poor father's death [Sept. 1829] proved a heavy blow upon me, and has been followed by others of the same dark kind.”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Quote from Turner's letter, London Feb. 1830, to his friend George Jones in Rome; as cited in 'The life of J.M.W. Turner', Volume II, George Walter Thornbury; https://ia801207.us.archive.org/18/items/lifeofjmwturnerr02thor/lifeofjmwturnerr02thor.pdf Hurst and Blackett Publishers, London, 1862, p. 233
1821 - 1851

Trevor Noah photo

“In life only three things are certain: death, Adobe updates and taxes.”

Trevor Noah (1984) South African comedian

13 May 2016
The Daily Show
Source: Visible at 00:05 #WeakDonald Trump Won't Release His Tax Returns http://www.cc.com/video-clips/cd7iyf/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah--weakdonald-trump-won-t-release-his-tax-returns, CC.com, 13 May 2016.

James Hudson Taylor photo

“You are not sent to preach death and sin and judgment, but life and holiness and salvation – not to be a witness against the people, but to be a witness for God – to preach the good news – Christ Himself.”

James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) Missionary in China

(A.J. Broomhall. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century, Book Five: Refiner’s Fire. London: Hodder and Stoughton and Overseas Missionary Fellowship, 1985, 258).

Gamal Abdel Nasser photo

“We have to go along a road covered with blood. We have no other alternative. For us it is a matter of life or death, a matter of living or existing. We have to be ready to face the challenges that await us.”

Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970) second president of Egypt

Gamal Abdel Nasser, speech to Egypt's National Assembly, Cairo (November 6, 1969), as reported by The Washington Post (November 7, 1969), p. 1.

Thomas Robert Malthus photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Myron Tribus photo
Yoshida Kenkō photo
George Chapman photo
Ali Khamenei photo

“It goes without saying that the slogan does not mean death to the American nation; this slogan means death to the US’s policies, death to arrogance.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Explains 'Death to America' Slogan http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/irans-ayatollah-ali-khamenei-explains-death-america-slogan-n456406 (November 3, 2015)
2015

Jane Roberts photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

The Stars in Their Courses (1974), p. 36
General sources

Horace Greeley photo

“V. We complain that the Union cause has suffered, and is now suffering immensely, from mistaken deference to Rebel Slavery. Had you, Sir, in your Inaugural Address, unmistakably given notice that, in case the Rebellion already commenced were persisted in, and your efforts to preserve the Union and enforce the laws should be resisted by armed force, you would recognize no loyal person as rightfully held in Slavery by a traitor, we believe the Rebellion would therein have received a staggering if not fatal blow. At that moment, according to the returns of the most recent elections, the Unionists were a large majority of the voters of the Slave States. But they were composed in good part of the aged, the feeble, the wealthy, the timid--the young, the reckless, the aspiring, the adventurous, had already been largely lured by the gamblers and negro-traders, the politicians by trade and the conspirators by instinct, into the toils of Treason. Had you then proclaimed that Rebellion would strike the shackles from the slaves of every traitor, the wealthy and the cautious would have been supplied with a powerful inducement to remain loyal. As it was, every coward in the South soon became a traitor from fear; for Loyalty was perilous, while Treason seemed comparatively safe. Hence the boasted unanimity of the South--a unanimity based on Rebel terrorism and the fact that immunity and safety were found on that side, danger and probable death on ours. The Rebels from the first have been eager to confiscate, imprison, scourge and kill: we have fought wolves with the devices of sheep. The result is just what might have been expected. Tens of thousands are fighting in the Rebel ranks to-day whose, original bias and natural leanings would have led them into ours.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Eddie Izzard photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Elaine Goodale Eastman photo
Warren Farrell photo
Julius Streicher photo

“The Roman historian Tacitus once said, that the health and the disease of a state can be measured in the number of its laws. If we Germans nowadays look at the huge number of laws, we have to say, that it's not health, but death that we're approaching. … It is strange that it is Social Democracy of all movements, which in the old state complained about exceptions, that now issues exception laws itself. These exception-laws are means of force and are created in the parliaments with the help of supranational financial powers. …
In the old state an interest rate of more than 6 percent was deemed usury. Today this usury is legalized. It was YOU, the men of the left -- who always pretend to fight against capitalism and exploitation -- who accomplished this. It will be your downfall!”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Der römische Geschichtsschreiber Tacitus hat einmal gesagt, dass man die Gesundheit und die Krankheit eines Staates nach der Zahl seiner Gesetze ermessen könne. Wenn wir Deutsche heute die große Zahl unserer Gesetze betrachten, dann müssen wir sagen, dass wir nicht der Gesundheit, sondern dem Tode entgegengehen. … Es ist sonderbar, dass ausgerechnet die Sozialdemokratie, die sich im alten Staat immer über Ausnahmen aufgeregt hat, jetzt selbst Ausnahmegesetze erläßt! Diese Ausnahmegesetze sind Zwangsmittel und werden in den Parlamenten mit Hilfe überstaatlicher Finanzmächte geschaffen. …
Im alten Staate galt ein Zinsfuß von mehr als 6 Prozent als Wucher. Heute ist dieser Wucher gesetzlich genehmigt. Das haben SIE, meine Herren von der Linken, die Sie immer vorgeben, Kapitalismus und Ausbeutung zu bekämpfen, fertiggebracht! Daran werden Sie zugrunde gehen!
04/20/1926, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

Erwin Schrödinger photo
Emir Kusturica photo

“I just don't get it. The pigeon was already dead, we found it in the road. And no other censor has objected. What is the problem with you, English? You killed millions of Indians and Africans, and yet you go nuts about the circumstances of the death of a single Serbian pigeon. I am touched you hold the lives of Serbian birds so dear, but you are crazy. I will never understand how your minds work.”

Emir Kusturica (1954) Serbian film director, actor and musician of Bosnian origin

In an interview in The Guardian (4 March 2005) http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,1429569,00.html about a British censor demanding that a shot of a cat pouncing on a pigeon be cut from his film Life is a Miracle
2000s

“I am not interested in illustrating my time. A man’s 'time' limits him; it does not truly liberate him. Our age – it is of science – of mechanism – of power and death. I see no point in adding to its mammoth arrogance the compliment of graphic homage.”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

Clyfford Still in an interview with Ti Grace Sharpless, 1963; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 201
1960s

Thomas Sowell photo

“Some of the people on death row today might not be there if the courts had not been so lenient on them when they were first offenders.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

“On the military side, we need to get two things right if we only talk about limited air strikes against Isil [Isis] – and I back international action against Isil – it will be counterproductive. We have to look at the conflict dynamic in Syria, and that is 75% of civilian deaths and causalities are caused by the Assad regime due to his aerial bombardment of civilians.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Speaking on BBC Daily Politics show — UK 'should enforce Syria no-fly zone even if Russia vetoes UN resolution' https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/12/uk-should-be-prepared-enforce-syria-no-fly-zone-russian-veto-un-isis-assad (12 October 2015)

“Was that what he wanted, what the grand scheme of Utopia 3 was designed for? It was a lot like death, only more tedious.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Death in Florence (1978), Chapter 2 “A New Mann” (p. 99).

Carol Ann Duffy photo

“What do I have
to help me, without spell or prayer,
endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous,
the death of love?”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Over, from Rapture (2005).

Tim Keller (pastor) photo

“What does it mean, then, to become part of God’s work in the world? What does it mean to live a Christian life? One way to answer that question is to look back into the life of the Trinity and the original creation. God made us to ever increasingly share in his own joy and delight in the same way he has joy and delight within himself. We share his joy first as we give him glory (worshipping and serving him rather than ourselves); second, as we honor and serve the dignity of other human beings made in the image of God’s glory; and third, as we cherish his derivative glory in the world of nature, which also reflects it. We glorify and enjoy him only as we worship him, serve the human community, and care for the created environment.
Another way to look at the Christian life, however, is to see it from the perspective of the final restoration. The world and our hearts are broken. Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection was an infinitely costly rescue operation to restore justice to the oppressed and marginalized, physical wholeness to the diseased and dying, community to the isolated and lonely, and spiritual joy and connection to those alienated from God. To be a Christian today is to become part of that same operation, with the expectation of suffering and hardship and the joyful assurance of eventual success.”

The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (2008), Ch. 14: The Dance of God

Elon Musk photo

“The probability of death is quite high on the first [human] mission”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

to Mars
"Elon Musk's Plan To Colonize Mars Gives Us The Sci-Fi Future We Crave: Now let's see if he can make it reality." https://www.popsci.com/elon-musks-master-plan-for-colonizing-mars-gives-us-sci-fi-future-we-crave Popular Science magazine. (September 27, 2016)

Antonin Scalia photo
Kuruvilla Pandikattu photo
Rudolph Rummel photo
Frederick Buechner photo
Dorothy Parker photo
William Ernest Henley photo

“From the winter’s gray despair,
From the summer’s golden languor,
Death, the lover of Life,
Frees us for ever.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

Source: In Hospital (1908), p. 20

Anthony Weiner photo
William Empson photo

“Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death
Making death their ideal basis for different ideals.
The Communists however disapprove of death
Except when practical.”

William Empson (1906–1984) English literary critic and poet

"Ignorance of Death" (1940), line 3; cited from John Haffenden (ed.) The Complete Poems (London: Allen Lane, 2000) p. 78.
The Complete Poems

Joseph Goebbels photo

“1923. You challenged your fate. To surmount or to die! It was not yet time. Therefore you became a victim.
Your answer was: Death!”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1923. Du fordertest dein Schicksal in die Schranken. Biegen oder brechen! Noch war es zu früh. Deshalb wurdest du Opfer.
Deine Antwort war: Tod!
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Conrad Aiken photo

“Death is a meeting place of sea and sea.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Eliezer Yudkowsky photo
Louis Pasteur photo
Zia Haider Rahman photo
Adam Roberts photo
Nicholas Ferrar photo
Jonathan Edwards photo

“If Adam had finished his course of perfect obedience, he would have been justified: and certainly his justification would have implied something more than what is merely negative; he would have been approved of, as having fulfilled the righteousness of the law, and accordingly would have been adjudged to the reward of it. So Christ, our second surety, (in whose justification all whose surety he is, are virtually justified,) was not justified till he had done the work the Father had appointed him, and kept the Father’s commandments through all trials; and then in his resurrection he was justified. When he had been put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit, 1 Pet. iii. 18. then he that was manifest in the flesh was justified in the spirit, 1 Tim. iii. 16.; but God, when he justified him in raising him from the dead, did not only release him from his humiliation for sin, and acquit him from any further suffering or abasement for it, but admitted him to that eternal and immortal life, and to the beginning of that exaltation that was the reward of what he had done. And indeed the justification of a believer is no other than his being admitted to communion in the justification of this head and surety of all believers; for as Christ suffered the punishment of sin, not as a private person, but as our surety; so when after this suffering he was raised from the dead, he was therein justified, not as a private person, but as the surety and representative of all that should believe in him. So that he was raised again not only for his own, but also for our justification, according to the apostle, Rom. iv. 25. “Who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification.””

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

And therefore it is that the apostle says, as he does in Rom. viii. 34. “Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again.
Justification By Faith Alone (1738)

Siegfried Sassoon photo

“If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line of death.”

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) English poet, diarist and memoirist

"Base Details"
The Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

Coretta Scott King photo

“We must all begin to question the experts. They have not really been right. No abundance of material goods can compensate for the death of individuality and personal creativity.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Harvard class day address (1968); published in the July 1, 1968, issue of Harvard Alumni Bulletin http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/05/coretta-scott-king-urges-students-to-speak-out-with-righteous-indignation
As quoted in International Education Vol. 1, p. 26

Mickey Spillane photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Dana Gioia photo

“My blessed California, you are so wise.
You render death abstract, efficient, clean.
Your afterlife is only real estate,
And in his kingdom Death must stay unseen.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"A California Requiem"
Poetry, Interrogations at Noon (2001)

Mohsen Rezaee photo

“The American empire is hovering between life and death.”

Mohsen Rezaee (1954) Iranian politician & Senior Military

Iran May Go Underground with Its Nuclear Activities http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=1173 (June 2006)

“We aim to make Tainan a Muslim-friendly city with services from birth to death.”

Li Meng-yen (2018) cited in " Islam Campus Summit held at National Cheng Kung University http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aedu/201806070021.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 7 June 2018

Frank Bainimarama photo
Rebecca Latimer Felton photo
Akira Ifukube photo
Hans Arp photo
George Eliot photo
William Morley Punshon photo
Ron Paul photo
Karel Appel photo

“[artists are people] who employ matter between birth and death. Matter is something to use, not possess.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

Emily Brontë photo
John Angell James photo
Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo
William Ernest Henley photo

“Life — life — life! 'Tis the sole great thing
This side of death,
Heart on heart in the wonder of Spring!”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

Source: Hawthorn and Lavender (1901), XI

Aron Ra photo
David Gerrold photo
Robinson Jeffers photo

“There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew that cultures decay, and life's end is death.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

"The Purse-Seine" (1937)