Quotes about death (5968 quotes, page 31)

“(Sylvia to Venusian Gernif): What would happen if you wore a dress? Well, some people would invite you to parties. And some people would attempt to beat you to death.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 221

People

“The Merciful Beholding of His Countenance of love fulfilled all earth and descended down with Adam into hell, with which continuant pity Adam was kept from endless death. And thus Mercy and Pity dwelleth with mankind unto the time we come up into Heaven.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

Summations, Chapter 51

Love , Hell , Time

“In this country — the most favored beneath the bending skies — we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child — and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity…”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

Federal Court statement (1918)

People , Youth , Age , Way

“The Parliament of Toulouse burned 400 witches at one time. Four hundred women at one hour on the public square, dying the horrid death of fire for a crime which never existed save in the imagination of those persecutors and which grew in their imagination from a false belief in woman’s extraordinary wickedness, based upon a false theory as to original sin.”

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898) American abolitionist, writer

Source: Woman, Church and State (1893), p. 228

Women , Imagination , Time , Falseness

“[M]ost of the pop music out today I consider to have become a homogenized product. It gets to the point that so much of what is going on is copying everything else that is out, because there is a businessman that knows what he has just sold millions of records with, and so he keeps trying to get every group that comes in to do it, you know. You know, you approach somebody who is well known as a booker or manager, and the first remark will be, "I love what you do, but you would have to change this to this, and that to that, and this to this, in order for me to be able to sell it." Well, by the time you've changed that, of course, it's like everything else that is out there. And when Prince first started sending me songs, I thought maybe that by the time I had done four arrangements that I would have started getting some sort of a repetitive something or other. I have been extremely surprised to find that each one is as different from the last as the next one is going to be different. Some of them are like little art songs. Some of them have dealt with heavy things like friendship and death. I mean, death of a friend. And yet, some of them are as baudy as…”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Radio interview, circa 1985, by Ben Sidran, as quoted in Talking Jazz With Ben Sidran, Volume 1: The Rhythm Section https://books.google.com/books?id=O3hZDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT456 (1992, 2006, 2014)

Love , Friendship , Art , Music

“At the heart of death’s history lie not only the emotion of grief and the breaking of bonds between each other and our place in this world but also the hope of answering the queries and resolving the injustices of a lifetime.”

Douglas Davies

Source: A Brief History of Death (2005), Ch. 1 : Journey Beyond.

Lie , World , Hope , History

“The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (1995)
1990s

“Propensities for crime are irrelevant in a discussion about the murder of an individual — Ms. Kathryn Steinle and all other victims of criminals who should not be in the U. S. For these deaths have nothing to do with aggregate crime rates; they're about individuals who should be alive: a baby that should have been born, a girl who should be among the living, young men and women who should not be dead. To justify the crime-probabilities line-of-inquiry in the context of killer Francisco Sanchez' presence that day on the San Francisco pier, you would need to show that had Sanchez been deported or jailed or turned back at the border—his victim, Ms. Steinle, would nevertheless have suffered the same fate at the hands of a native murderer. The same eventuality would need to be demonstrated with respect to each individual victim of a criminal alien. The implication is crushingly stupid.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"The Hispandering Effect," http://www.quarterly-review.org/the-hispandering-effect/ The Quarterly Review, July 12, 2015.
2010s, 2015

Women , Men , Fate , Stupidity

“The enemy may land on this island soon. Once they do, we must follow the fate of those on Attu and Saipan. Our officers and men know about “Death” very well. I am sorry to end my life here, fighting the United States of America, but I want to defend this island as long as possible and to delay the enemy air raids on Tokyo. Ah! You have worked well for a long time as my wife and the mother of my three children. Your life will become harder and more precarious. Watch out for your health and live long. The future of our children will not be easy either. Please take care of them after my death.”

Tadamichi Kuribayashi (1891–1945) Japanese general

Letter to his wife shortly before the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Life , Men , Fate , Children

“I will not seek the battle-field —
The men I there should meet,
What have they done to me to make
Shedding their life-blood sweet?
It is the veriest madness man
In maddest mood can frame,
To feed the earth with human gore,
And then to call it fame.
I have been wrong'd; but were my wrong
The deadliest wrong ere done,
I would not slay my enemy,
But bid him still live on :—
And I should deem my vengeance more
Than the death-wound in strife—
What ills can death inflict like those
Heap'd on each hour of life?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

19th August 1826) Metrical Fragments - No. 1 (under the pen name Iole
The London Literary Gazette, 1826

Life , Men , Mood , Madness

“Plowboy: You truly feel that all the major changes in history have been caused by science and technology?
Asimov: Those that have proved permanent—the ones that affected every facet of life and made certain that mankind could never go back again—were always brought about by science and technology. In fact, the same twin "movers" were even behind the other "solely" historical changes. Why, for instance, did Martin Luther succeed, whereas other important rebels against the medieval church—like John Huss—fail? Well, Luther was successful because printing had been developed by the time he advanced his cause. So his good earthy writings were put into pamphlets and spread so far and wide that the church officials couldn't have stopped the Protestant Reformation even if they had burned Luther at the stake.
Plowboy: Today the world is changing faster than it has at any other time in history. Do you then feel that science—and scientists—are especially important now?
Asimov: I do think so, and as a result it's my opinion that anyone who can possibly introduce science to the nonscientist should do so. After all, we don't want scientists to become a priesthood. We don't want society's technological thinkers to know something that nobody else knows—to "bring down the law from Mt. Sinai"—because such a situation would lead to public fear of science and scientists. And fear, as you know, can be dangerous.
Plowboy: But scientific knowledge is becoming so incredibly vast and specialized these days that it's difficult for any individual to keep up with it all.
Asimov: Well, I don't expect everybody to be a scientist or to understand every new development. After all, there are very few Americans who know enough about football to be a referee or to call the plays … but many, many people understand the sport well enough to follow the game. It's not important that the average citizen understand science so completely that he or she could actually become involved in research, but it is very important that people be able to "follow the game" well enough to have some intelligent opinions on policy.
Every subject of worldwide importance—each question upon which the life and death of humanity depends—involves science, and people are not going to be able to exercise their democratic right to direct government policy in such areas if they don't understand what the decisions are all about.”

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

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Life , People , World , Fear

“Recently, the press has been filled with reports of sightings of flying saucers. While we need not give credence to these stories, they allow our imagination to speculate on how visitors from outer space would judge us. I am afraid they would be stupefied at our conduct. They would observe that for death planning we spend billions to create engines and strategies for war. They would also observe that we spend millions to prevent death by disease and other causes. Finally they would observe that we spend paltry sums for population planning, even though its spontaneous growth is an urgent threat to life on our planet. Our visitors from outer space could be forgiven if they reported home that our planet is inhabited by a race of insane men whose future is bleak and uncertain.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Family Planning - A Special and Urgent Concern (1966)

Life , Men , War , Disease

“This case is all about creating a public sob story. There is no homophobic behaviour in Brazil. Those who die, 90% of homosexual deaths, they die in drug related situations, in prostitution, or even killed by their own partners. I went into battle with the gays because the government proposed anti-homophobia classes for the junior grades, but that would actively stimulate homosexuality in children from 6 years old. This is not normal.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

About the kidnapping and murder of the teenager Alexandre Ivo by skinheads in 2010, in an interview to Stephen Fry in October 2013. Jair Bolsonaro provoca polêmica em documentário do ator Stephen Fry sobre homofobia https://vejasp.abril.com.br/blog/pop/jair-bolsonaro-provoca-polemica-em-documentario-do-ator-stephen-fry-sobre-homofobia/. Veja SP (23 October 2013).

Children

“All religions are ultimately cargo cults.
Adherents perform required rituals, follow
specific rules, and expect to be supernaturally
gifted with desired rewards—long life,
honor, wisdom, children, good health, wealth,
victory over opponents, immortality after
death, any desired rewards.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 19 (p. 357)

Life , Wisdom , Children , Health

“What will we do when they start capturing our people?" Klein asked. "They will, you know, if they haven't by now. Things go wrong." Heydrich's fingers drummed some more. He didn't worry about the laborers who'd expanded this redoubt- they'd all gone straight to the camps after they did their work. But captured fighters were indeed another story. He sighed. "Things go wrong. Ja. If they didn't, Stalin would be lurking somewhere in the Pripet Marshes, trying to keep his partisans fighting against us. We would've worked Churchill to death in a coal mine." He barked laughter. "The British did some of that for us, when they threw the bastard out of office last month. And we'd be getting ready to fight the Amis on their side of the Atlantic. But… things went wrong." "Yes, sir." After a moment, Klein ventured, "Uh, sir- you didn't answer my question." "Oh. Prisoners." Heydrich had to remind himself what his aide was talking about. "I don't know what to do, Klein, except make sure our people all have cyanide pills." "Some won't have the chance to use them. Some won't have the nerve," Klein said. Not many men had the nerve to tell Reinhard Heydrich the unvarnished truth. Heydrich kept Klein around not least because Klein was one of those men. They were useful to have. Hitler would have done better had he seen that. Heydrich recognized the truth when he heard it now; one more thing Hitler'd had trouble with.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 56-57

Men , People , Truth , Question

“Preventive war is like committing suicide for fear of death.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

Quoted as a remark of Bismark without quotation marks, in Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s (1984) by Herman Kahn, p. 136, a paraphrase of what Bismarck told the Reichstag on Feb. 9, 1876. Referring to March 1875, when the French National Assembly had decided to strengthen their army by 144,000 additional troops, Bismarck asked the deputies to imagine he had told them a year ago that one had to wage war without having been attacked or humiliated: „Würden Sie da nicht sehr geneigt gewesen sein, zunächst nach dem Arzte zu schicken (Heiterkeit), um untersuchen zu lassen, wie ich dazu käme, dass ich nach meiner langen politischen Erfahrung die kolossale Dummheit begehen könnte, so vor Sie zu treten und zu sagen: Es ist möglich, dass wir in einigen Jahren einmal angegriffen werden, damit wir dem nun zuvorkommen, fallen wir rasch über unsere Nachbarn her und hauen sie zusammen, ehe sie sich vollständig erholen – gewissermaßen Selbstmord aus Besorgniß vor dem Tode" (Would you not have been inclined very much to send for a physician in the first place and let him find out, how I with my long experience in politics could commit the colossal stupidity of [...] telling you: It is possible that in some years we might be attacked; to pre-empt that, let us overrun our neighbors and smash them before they have fully recovered [from the war of 1870/71] - in a way [commit] suicide from fear of death) reichstagsprotokolle.de 1875/76,2 http://www.reichstagsprotokolle.de/Blatt3_k2_bsb00018381_00571.html p. 1329-30
1870s

War , Fear , Suicide

“In consequence of the great fear which fell upon Jaipál, who confessed he had seen death before the appointed time, he sent a deputation to the Amír soliciting peace, on the promise of his paying down a sum of money, and offering to obey any order he might receive respecting his elephants and his country. The Amir Subuktigín consented on account of mercy he felt towards those who were his vassals, or for some other reason which seemed expedient to him. But the Sultán Yamínu-d daula Mahmúd addressed the messengers in a harsh voice, and refused to abstain from battle, until he should obtain a complete victory suited to his zeal for the honour of Islám and the Musulmáns, and one which he was confident God would grant to his arms. So they returned, and Jaipál being in great alarm, again sent the most humble supplications that the battle might cease saying, "You have seen the impetuosity of the Hindus and their indifference to death, whenever any calamity befalls them, as at this moment. If therefore, you refuse to grant peace in the hope of obtaining plunder, tribute, elephants and prisoners, then there is no alternative for us but to mount the horse of stern determination, destroy our property, take out the eyes of our elephants, cast our children into fire, and rush out on each other with sword and spear, so that all that will be left to you to conquer and seize is stones and dirt, dead bodies, and scattered bones."”

Sabuktigin (942–997) Founder of the Ghaznavid Empire

Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume II, pp. 20-21. Translation of Tarikh-i-Yamini of al-Utbi.

Money , God , Children , Fear

“Until we know that death is equal to life, we live in fear.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Life , Fear

“It is not death therefore that is burdensome, but the fear of death.”

Ambrose book De bono mortis

De bono mortis, 8, 31.

Fear

“I could go on, but the point is clear: religions make explicit claims about reality—about what exists and happens in the universe. These claims involve the existence of gods, the number of such gods (polytheism or monotheism), their character and behavior (usually loving and beneficent, but, in the case of Hindu and ancient Greek gods, sometimes mischievous or malevolent), how they interact with the world, whether or not there are souls or life after death, and, above all, how the deities wish us to behave—their moral code.
These are empirical claims, and although some may be hard to test, they must, like all claims about reality, be defended with a combination of evidence and reason. If we find no credible evidence, no good reasons to believe, then those claims should be disregarded, just as most of us ignore claims about ESP, astrology, and alien abduction. After all, beliefs important enough to affect you for eternity surely deserve the closest scrutiny.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 23

Love , Life , God , World

“I won the contract for our company to install new ramps and equipment at Beefland. Building a "Stairway to Heaven" for the animals was more than just constructing a steel ramp-way into a concrete room. All of the workers, myself included, invested ourselves in he project. Sometimes tempers flared, but when the job was completed, we were better friends. As the "stairway" began to take shape, many thoughts crowded in on me. I became aware of how precious life was. I thought about death and I felt close to God. He had given us dominion over the animals so we could make use of them, but I realized now, more than ever, that the animals were His creation too, and, thus, they should be treated with respect. One day my blind roommate visited the plant. She reached over the side of the chute and touched the cattle. She wrote the following prayer after her visit: "The Stairway to Heaven" is dedicated to persons who desire to learn the meaning of life and not to fear death. You, through respect for these animals, can come to respect your fellow man as well. Touch, Listen and Remember."”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Pages 134-135 of Emergence: Labeled Autistic by Temple Grandin and Margaret M. Scariano

Life , God , Fear , Way

“I realized that wherever she came from, whatever shaped her, she’s the quintessence of the horror behind the bright billboard. She’s the smile that tricks you into throwing away your money and your life. She’s the eyes that lead you on and on, and then show you death. She’s the creature you give everything for and never really get. She’s the being that takes everything you’ve got and gives nothing in return. When you yearn towards her face on the billboards, remember that. She’s the lure. She’s the bait. She’s the Girl.”

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction

“The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” (p. 241)
Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)

Life , Money , Smile , Girl

“Life, you are our friend. Death, our lover.”

Alessandro Pavolini (1903–1945) Italian politician and writer

Quoted in "L'Italia del fascio" By Mario Isnenghi - Page 39.

Life , Lovers

“For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad of tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves…. I would like to hold them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stopping one, there would only remain in my hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

Birth , Chance

“In paper, many a poet now survives
Or else their lines had perish'd with their lives.
Old Chaucer, Gower, and Sir Thomas More,
Sir Philip Sidney, who the laurel wore,
Spenser, and Shakespeare did in art excell,
Sir Edward Dyer, Greene, Nash, Daniel.
Sylvester, Beaumont, Sir John Harrington,
Forgetfulness their works would over run
But that in paper they immortally
Do live in spite of death, and cannot die.”

John Taylor (1578–1653) English poet of the 16th and 17th centuries

From "The Praise of Hemp-seed" http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/Renascence_Editions/taylor1.html, published 1620. This is the earliest surviving printed reference to the death of William Shakespeare and Francis Beaumont, who had both died in 1616.

Art , Forgetting

“Death is the thing I am most afraid of, and the resurrection of the flesh, a great Spanish theme, is the one that it is hardest for me to accept, from the point of view of.... life.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1971 - 1980, Comment on deviant Dali, les aveux inavouables de Salvador Dali, p. 22

Life

“Here was a place where men and life and death had reached the lowest form of degradation. How could any reward in national progress even faintly justify the establishment and operation of such a place?”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

After visiting the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Germany, as quoted in The New York Times (20 April 1980) http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/27/specials/lindbergh-jews.html

Life , Men

“My friends, there is one spot on earth where the fear of Death, of Sin, and of Judgment, need never trouble us, the only safe spot on earth where the sinner can stand — Calvary.”

Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) American evangelist and publisher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 173.

Fear

“The victory… was complete except for one final indignity. That was to Americanize the Indian… to exterminate the cultures along with the Indians. …Orders went out from Washington that all male Indians must cut their hair short, even though many Indians believed that long hair had supernatural significance. …Army reinforcements were sent to the reservations to carry out the order, and in some cases Indians had to be shackled before they submitted. …attention of the Americanizers was concentrated on the Indian children, who were snatched from their families and shipped to boarding schools far from their homes… usually … for eight years, during which time they were not permitted to see their parents, relatives, or friends. Anything Indian—dress, language, religious practices, even outlook on life… was uncompromisingly prohibited. …They had suffered psychological death at an early age.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

Life , Children , Age , School

“Beautiful women, as experienced men know,
Are but darkness wrapped in dazzling light aglow.
A life of friv'lous youth and worried age,
Its futile course to futile death will flow.”

Al-Mutanabbi (915–965) Arabic poet from the Abbasid era

A Young Soul

Life , Women , Men , Youth

“I wonder what your idea of heaven would be — A beautiful vacuum filled with wealthy monogamists. All powerful and members of the best families all drinking themselves to death. And hell would probably an ugly vacuum full of poor polygamists unable to obtain booze or with chronic stomach disorders that they called secret sorrows.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (1 July 1925); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Secret , Family , Beauty , Idea

“My God, help me always resolutely to strive, and, through life and death, to force my way unto Thee.”

Christian Scriver (1629–1693) German hymnwriter

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 206.

Life , God , Way , Help

“The death clock is ticking slowly in our breast, and each drop of blood measures its time, and our life is a lingering fever.”

Georg Büchner Leonce and Lena

Act II.
Leonce and Lena (1838)

Life , Time

“Mortal! fear no more,—
The reign is past of ancient violence;
And Jove hath sworn that time shall not deface,
Nor death destroy, nor mutability
Perplex the truth of love.”

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher

Sylphs
Poems (1851), Prometheus

Love , Truth , Fear , Time

“During life, a spirit is held to the body by his semi-material envelope, or perispirit. Death is the destruction of the body only, but not of this second envelope, which separates itself from the body when the play of organic life ceases in the latter. Observation shows us that the separation of the perispirit from the body is not suddenly completed at the moment of death, but is only effected gradually, and more or less slowly in different individuals. In some cases it is effected so quickly that the perispirit is entirely separated from the body within a few hours of the death of the latter but in other cases, and especially in the case of those whose life has been grossly material and sensual, this deliverance is much less rapid, and sometimes takes days, weeks, and even months, for its accomplishment. This delay does not imply the slightest persistence of vitality in the body, nor any possibility of its return to life, but is simply the result of a certain affinity between the body and the spirit which affinity is always more or less tenacious in proportion to the preponderance of materiality in the affections of the spirit during his earthly life.”

Allan Kardec (1804–1869) systematizer of Spiritism

Source: The Spirits' Book, p. 116.

Life

“We cannot traffic in our principles, we can make no compromise, no agreement with the ruling system. We must break with the ruling system and fight it to a finish. It must fall that socialism may arise, and we certainly cannot expect from the ruling class that it will give to itself and its domination the death blow.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Fight

“Slate's Dave Cullen thought he had solved the why riddle in his article, "The Depressive and the Psychopath: At Last We Know Why the Columbine Killers Did It", published on April 20, 2004, the fifth anniversary of the massacre. Cullen wrote, "[Eric Harris] was a brilliant killer without a conscience, searching for the most diabolical scheme imaginable. If he had lived to adulthood and developed his murderous skills for many more years, there is no telling what he could have done. His death at Columbine may have stopped him from doing something worse."”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Cullen's breakthrough, like the Richmond Enquirers, is essentially this: Eric Harris murdered because he was an evil murderer.
Part II: The Banality of Slavery, page 58.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)

Imagination , Search , Evil , Adulthood

“In Vienna, Modernism had three main characteristics. The first was the new view of the human mind as being largely irrational by nature. …they questioned what constitutes reality, what lies below the surface appearances of people, objects, and events. …They discovered that …people harbor not only unconscious erotic feelings, but also unconscious aggressive impulses that are directed against themselves as well as against others. Freud later called these dark impulses the death instinct.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

The Age of Insight (2012)

People , Feeling , Question , Nature

“Consider the impasse of a one-God universe. He is all-knowing and all-powerful. He can't go anywhere, since He is already everywhere. He can't do anything, since the act of doing presupposes opposition. His universe is irrevocably thermodynamic, having no friction by definition. So, He has to create friction: War, Fear, Sickness, Death, to keep his dying show on the road.”

William S. Burroughs book The Western Lands

lyric from spoken-word recording "A One God Universe," featured on Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales, paraphrased by Burroughs from The Western Lands, p. 113
The Western Lands (1987)

God , War , Fear , Universe

“Interview of 1929, as quoted in "Nations are greatly concerned over death of German President" in Berkeley Daily Gazette”

Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and president of Germany

1 August 1934
Variant translation:
I am not a pacifist. That is not my attitude. But all my impressions of war are so bad that I could be for it only under the sternest necessity — the necessity of fighting Bolshevism or of defending one's country.
As quoted in TIME magazine (13 January 1930)
President

Quotes

“Death is the ugly fact which Nature has to hide, and she hides it well.”

Alexander Smith (1829–1867) Scottish poet and essayist

"The Fear of Dying".
City Poems (1857)

Nature

“Now they [the Powers] have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death?”

Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) Chinese empress

[The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China, Keith Laidler, 2003, John Wiley & Sons, 221, http://books.google.com/books?id=QLPZ7294oSIC&pg=PA221&dq=have+started+the+aggression,+and+the+extinction+of+our+nation+is+imminent++no+face+ancestors+death&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oGsLT5rpEqHu0gGY29nuBQ&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=have%20started%20the%20aggression%2C%20and%20the%20extinction%20of%20our%20nation%20is%20imminent%20%20no%20face%20ancestors%20death&f=false, 1-9-2011, 0470864265, the courage and fighting spirit were at once evident: 'Now they have started the aggression,' she declared, 'and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death?'2]
[Massacre in Shansi, Nat Brandt, 1994, illustrated, Syracuse University Press, 181, http://books.google.com/books?id=R0GGv-Dio1MC&pg=PA181&dq=have+started+the+aggression,+and+the+extinction+of+our+nation+is+imminent++no+face+ancestors+death&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oGsLT5rpEqHu0gGY29nuBQ&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=have%20started%20the%20aggression%2C%20and%20the%20extinction%20of%20our%20nation%20is%20imminent%20%20no%20face%20ancestors%20death&f=false, 1-9-2011, 0815602820, Tz'u Hsi was enraged: "Now the Powers have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death."' The Peking Field Force — made up of five armies — was ordered to surround the legations supposedly to protect the diplomats but effectively sealing them off from the rest of the city.]
[The Boxer Rebellion, Richard O'Connor, 1973, illustrated, reprint, Hale, 85, http://books.google.com/books?ei=oGsLT5rpEqHu0gGY29nuBQ&id=LYVxAAAAMAAJ&dq=have+started+the+aggression%2C+and+the+extinction+of+our+nation+is+imminent++no+face+ancestors+death&q=extinction+ancestors, 1-9-2011, 0709147805, 3. All military operations were to be controlled by the foreign ministers. . . As she listened, her majesty's face was congested with rage. . . .With firm and vehement emphasis she then told the Grand Council: "Now they have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death?]
[The spirit soldiers: a historical narrative of the Boxer Rebellion, Richard O'Connor, 1973, illustrated, Putnam, 85, http://books.google.com/books?ei=oGsLT5rpEqHu0gGY29nuBQ&id=P4NxAAAAMAAJ&dq=have+started+the+aggression%2C+and+the+extinction+of+our+nation+is+imminent++no+face+ancestors+death&q=extinction+imminent, 1-9-2011, 3. All military operations were to be controlled by the foreign . . .Council: "Now they have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death? She then elaborated on the great benefits the Manchu dynasty had conferred upon China and predicted that the grateful Chinese]
[The Siege at Peking: The Boxer Rebellion, Peter Fleming, 1990, illustrated, Dorset Press, 97, http://books.google.com/books?id=pHrZAAAAMAAJ&q=have+started+the+aggression,+and+the+extinction+of+our+nation+is+imminent++no+face+ancestors+death&dq=have+started+the+aggression,+and+the+extinction+of+our+nation+is+imminent++no+face+ancestors+death&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oGsLT5rpEqHu0gGY29nuBQ&ved=0CEcQ6AEwBA, 1-9-2011, 0880294620, 'Now,' she is reported to have exclaimed, 'the Powers have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death.]
[The Siege at Peking, Peter Fleming, 1959, NEW YORK 49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N.Y, HARPER & BROTHERS, 97, 1-9-2011, The Empress Dowager reacted in the way that the authors of the document presumably hoped she would. 'Now,' she is reported to have exclaimed, 'the Powers have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death?' A Decree (which was widely ignored) went out to the provinces ordering them to send troops to Peking.]
[The Boxer catastrophe, Issue 583 of Columbia studies in the social sciences, Chester C. Tan, 1967, reprint, Octagon Books, 73, http://books.google.com/books?ei=oGsLT5rpEqHu0gGY29nuBQ&id=_gcOAQAAMAAJ&dq=have+started+the+aggression%2C+and+the+extinction+of+our+nation+is+imminent++no+face+ancestors+death&q=extinction+nation, 1-9-2011, 0374977526, affairs to be committed to their hands. The fourth point was not mentioned. She then made the following statement: " Now they [the Powers] have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If]
[Columbia studies in the social sciences, Volume 583, Columbia University. Faculty of Political Science, 1955, Columbia University Press, 73, http://books.google.com/books?ei=oGsLT5rpEqHu0gGY29nuBQ&id=ZfocAQAAMAAJ&dq=have+started+the+aggression%2C+and+the+extinction+of+our+nation+is+imminent++no+face+ancestors+death&q=extinction+nation, 1-9-2011, metnioned. She then made the following statement: " Now they [the Powers] have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death? " Finally Hsü Yung-i,]
[The rhetoric of empire: American China policy, 1895-1901, Volume 36 of Harvard East Asian series, Marilyn Blatt Young, 1969, Harvard University Press, 147, http://books.google.com/books?ei=oGsLT5rpEqHu0gGY29nuBQ&id=tUlCAAAAIAAJ&dq=have+started+the+aggression%2C+and+the+extinction+of+our+nation+is+imminent++no+face+ancestors+death&q=extinction+imminent, 1-9-2011, a surrender of sovereignty: (1) a special place to be assigned to the emperor for residence; (2) all revenues to be collected by the foreign ministers; (3) all mmilitary affairs to be committed to their hands. . .After reading them out the empress dowager declare, "Now they [the powers] have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death?]
[The dragon empress: life and times of Tz'u-hsi, 1835-1908, Empress dowager of China, Marina Warner, 1974, illustrated, reprint, Cardinal, 227, http://books.google.com/books?ei=oGsLT5rpEqHu0gGY29nuBQ&id=hTend7Ttp9UC&dq=have+started+the+aggression%2C+and+the+extinction+of+our+nation+is+imminent++no+face+ancestors+death&q=extinction+imminent, 1-9-2011, 0351186573, 'Now,' she cried, 'now they have started the aggression and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we must fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death.'18 Quoting]
[Symbolic war: the Chinese use of force, 1840-1980, Volume 43 of Institute of International Relations English monograph series, Jonathan R. Adelman, Zhiyu Shi, 1993, Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University, 132, http://books.google.com/books?ei=oGsLT5rpEqHu0gGY29nuBQ&id=ZYm6AAAAIAAJ&dq=have+started+the+aggression%2C+and+the+extinction+of+our+nation+is+imminent++no+face+ancestors+death&q=aggression+extinction+imminent, 1-9-2011, 9579368236, Council issued a decree recruiting Boxers to the army, attacking the advance of Seymour, pacifying the Boxers and ordering local troops to march northward to protect the capital. The next day the Empress Dowager declared that, "Now they have started the aggression and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death."44 In the words of the imperial decree]

Fight

“There is abundant evidence in Stoppard’s plays to show that he is as capable of emotion as anybody. In Enter A Free Man Linda is a finely tuned moral invention whose equivalents we might well miss in the later plays, if we really thought they should be there. The mainspring of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the perception—surely a compassionate one—that the fact of their deaths mattering so little to Hamlet was something which ought to have mattered to Shakespeare.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Tom Stoppard: Count Zero Splits the Infinite'
Essays and reviews, At the Pillars of Hercules (1979)

Dead

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes — something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view. Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. … I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain”, p. 130-132.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Arizona and New Mexico: On Top," & "Arizona and New Mexico: Thinking Like a Mountain"

God , Fear , Exercises , Mountain

“Consider the Koran… this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book The World as Will and Representation

E. Payne, trans., Vol. II, Ch. XVII: On Man's Need for Metaphysics
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

War , Books , World , Religion

“Death - by hanging! - that, at least, I did not deserve. The death part - all right, somebody has to stand for the responsibility. But that - that I did not deserve!”

Alfred Jodl (1890–1946) German general

To Dr. G. M. Gilbert, after receiving the death sentence and getting annoyed more at the method of execution, hanging. Quoted in "Nuremberg Diary" by G. M. Gilbert - History - 1995.

Parting

“Overhead, capricious spring clouds began to scud across the sky in mackerel shapes, promising more rain. Garraty turned up his collar and listened to the sound of his feet pounding the pavement. There was a trick to that, a subtle mental adjustment, like having better night vision the longer you were in the dark. This morning the sound of his feet had been lost to him. They had been lost in the tramp of ninety-nine other pairs, not to mention the rumble of the halftrack. But now he heard them easily. His own particular stride, and the way his left foot scraped the pavement every now and then. It seemed to him that the sound of his footfalls had become as loud to his ears as the sound of his own heartbeat. Vital, life and death sound.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

The Long Walk (1979)

Life , Way , Spring , Night

“Hypocrisy is a universal phenomenon. It ends with death, but not before.”

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

"By the Numbers" (May 1973), in The Tragedy of the Moon (1973), p. 188
General sources

Universe

“Good jobs depend on sound tax policy. Last year, some in this hall thought my tax relief plan was too small; some thought it was too big. But when the checks arrived in the mail, most Americans thought tax relief was just about right. Congress listened to the people and responded by reducing tax rates, doubling the child credit, and ending the death tax. For the sake of long-term growth and to help Americans plan for the future, let's make these tax cuts permanent.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

People , Future , Help , Dependency

“Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.”

Guy De Maupassant book Sur l'eau

Sur l’eau (1888)

People

“In the final weeks of my seminary days, shortly after Dr. King's death, I found myself becoming consumed by feelings of animosity and anger. I was disenchanted with my church and my country. I was tired of being in the minority, and I was tired of turning the other cheek. I, along with many blacks, found ways to protest and try to change the treatment we received in this country. Perhaps my passion for Richard Wright novels was affecting me. Perhaps it was listening too intently to Nina Simone. Perhaps, like Bigger Thomas, I was being consumed by the circumstances in which I found myself, circumstances that I saw as responding only to race.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Way , Feeling , Passion , Change

“Most marijuana smokers are colored people, jazz musicians, and entertainers. Their satanic music is driven by marijuana, and marijuana smoking by white women makes them want to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others. It is a drug that causes insanity, criminality, and death — the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”

Harry J. Anslinger (1892–1975) 1st Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics

As quoted in Legalizing Marijuana : Drug Policy Reform and Prohibition Politics‎ (2004) by Rudolph Joseph Gerber, p. 9; also in Hawking Hits on the Information Highway : The Challenge of Online Drug Sales for Law Enforcement (2008) by Laura L. Finley , p. 28, and "The Emperor Wears No Clothes: The Authoritative Historical Record of Cannabis and the Conspiracy Against Marijuana" (1994) by Jack Herer, Jeanie Cabarga, and Jeanie Herer, p. 29.
Disputed

Women , People , Music , Color

“In their brief primitive phase, the Fifth Men, like so many other races, sought to console themselves by unreasoning faith in a life after death, They conceived, for instance, that at death terrestrial beings embarked upon a career continuous with earthly life, but far more ample, either in some remote planetary system, or in some wholly distinct orb of space-time. But though such theories were never disproved in the primitive era, they gradually began to seem not merely improbable but ignoble.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter XII: The Last Terrestrials; Section 1, “The Cult of Evanescence” (p. 176)

Life , Men , Faith , Time

“He had hugged his antiquated dislike of bankers and capitalistic society until he had become little better than a crank. He had known for years that he must accept the regime, but he had known a great many other disagreeable certainties -- like age, senility, and death — against which one made what little resistance one could.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Age

““Well, Lord, is the soul the same as the body, is the soul one thing and the body another?”
“I have not declared that the soul is one thing and the body another.”
“Well, Lord, does the Tathāgata exist after death?” …
“I have not declared that the Tathāgata exists after death.” …
“But, Lord, why has the Lord not declared these things?”
“Potthapada, that is not conducive to the purpose, not conducive to Dhamma, not the way to embark on the holy life; it does not lead to disenchantment, to dispassion, to cessation, to calm, to higher knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbana. That is why I have not declared it.””

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 9, verse 28, p. 164
Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Digha Nikaya (Long Discourses)

Life , Way , Soul , Knowledge

“I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake. What you don't know won't hurt you. Sleep is death without the responsibility.”

Fran Lebowitz book Metropolitan Life

"Why I Love Sleep" (p. 91).
Metropolitan Life (1978)

Love , Sleep , Hurt

“The richness of human life is that we have many lives, we live the events that do not happen (and some that cannot) as vividly as those that do, and if thereby we die a thousand deaths, that is the price we pay…”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"The Reach of Imagination" (1967)

Life

“The question now is how to fill the void Jensen's death leaves, particularly for scholars open to scientific inquiry who challenge some of his conclusions. There is no substitute for someone of great intellectual caliber who disagrees with you. With Jensen no longer alive, we will have to invent him. But we cannot really do that, because no one is so constructed as to put the same energy and imagination into a fictitious opponent as we put into polishing our own ideas. No one can pretend to believe what they do not believe, but I hope there is a young scholar out there with the convictions and mind of Arthur Jensen. I am sometimes asked why I spoke so well of him. The answer is that it was easy.”

James Robert Flynn (1934–2020) New Zealand scholar

Flynn, J. R. (2012). Arthur Robert Jensen (1923–2012). Intelligence.

Hope , Imagination , Idea , Question

“Treasure maps; Czarist bonds; a case of stuffed dodos; Scarlett O'Hara's birth certificate; two flattened and deformed silver bullet heads in an old matchbox; Baedeker's guide to Atlantis (seventeenth edition, 1902); the autograph score of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, with Das Ende written neatly at the foot of the last page; three boxes of moon rocks; a dumpy, heavy statuette of a bird covered in dull black paint, which reminded him of something but he couldn't remember what; a Norwich Union life policy in the name of Vlad Dracul; a cigar box full of oddly shaped teeth, with CAUTION: DO NOT DROP painted on the lid in hysterical capitals; five or six doll's-house-sized books with titles like Lilliput On $2 A Day; a small slab of green crystal that glowed when he opened the envelope; a thick bundle of love letters bound in blue ribbon, all signed Margaret Roberts; a left-luggage token from North Central railway terminus, Ruritania; Bartholomew's Road Atlas of Oz (one page, with a yellow line smack down the middle); a brown paper bag of solid gold jelly babies; several contracts for the sale and purchase of souls; a fat brown envelope inscribed To Be Opened On My Death: E. A. Presley, unopened; Oxford and Cambridge Board O-level papers in Elvish language and literature, 1969-85; a very old drum in a worm-eaten sea-chest marked F. Drake, Plymouth, in with a load of minute-books and annual accounts of the Winchester Round Table; half a dozen incredibly ugly portraits of major Hollywood film stars; Unicorn-Calling, For Pleasure & Profit by J. R. Hartley; a huge collection of betting slips, on races to be held in the year 2019; all water, as far as Paul was concerned, off a duck's {back]”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

The Portable Door (2003)

Love , Life , Pleasure , Books

“Then there is this idea that the world owes you a living. Here is a little thought about that. It isn't particularly logical but it makes my point. You were paid when you were born, with the privilege of living. Death is all that is coming to you. Life came to you when you were born.”

John Sloan (1871–1951) American painter

Ibid., p. 27.
The Gist of Art (1939)

Life , World , Idea

“Death is very, very terminal.”

David Lange (1942–2005) New Zealand politician and 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand

In a speech raising awareness about the AIDS epidemic.
Source: National Business Review, 1 May 1987, p. 10.

“Her own grief grieved her. His devastated her. (On Sophie Mol's death, describing Mamachi's grief, and Chacko's).”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things (1997)

“There's fence against all things except death.”

James Howell (1594–1666) Anglo-Welsh historian and writer

Lexicon Tetraglotton (1660)

“As when a rose, ere-while of bloom so gay,
Thrown from the careless virgin's breast away,
Lies faded on the plain, the living red,
The snowy white, and all its fragrance fled;
So from her cheeks the roses died away,
And pale in death the beauteous Inez lay.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Assim como a bonina, que cortada
Antes do tempo foi, cândida e bela,
Sendo das mãos lascivas maltratada
Da menina que a trouxe na capela,
O cheiro traz perdido e a cor murchada:
Tal está morta a pálida donzela,
Secas do rosto as rosas, e perdida
A branca e viva cor, co'a doce vida.
Stanza 134 (tr. William Julius Mickle)
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto III

“Imagine how we would feel if I began this section saying, Today, violence against women is rightly applauded. We would know I favored the death of women; when we applaud for violence against men, we favor the death of men. We do it because we have learned that the more effectively we prepare men to sacrifice themselves, the more we are protected.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part 1: The Myth of Male Power, p. 76.

Women , Men , Feeling , Imagination

“O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

Here lies
The History of the World Book V, chapter 6

World

“The nineteenth century will colonize; so, in its fantasies, did the nineteenth century soul. When Emma [Bovary] turns spendthrift and buys curtains, carpets and hangings from the draper, the information takes on something from the theme of the novel itself: the material is a symbol of the exotic, and the exotic feeds the Romantic appetite. It will lead to satiety, bankruptcy and eventually to nihilism and the final drive towards death and nothingness.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

"Gustave Flaubert: The Quotidian", p. 130
The Myth Makers: European and Latin American Writers (1979)

Soul

“The question of relative atrocities may be illustrated by this fact: a close examination by the author of newspaper files for 1966 alone disclosed somewhere between 600 and 1,000 reported South Vietnamese civilian deaths attributed to “errors” in the use of “allied” firepower. During the same year the number of NLF killings, including paramilitary personnel, according to official Saigon estimates, was 1,000. That is, our acknowledged accidental civilian killings were of the same order of magnitude as official claims of NLF killings. It should be obvious that U. S. bombings and killings in “unfriendly” villages were many times greater than killings by mistake.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities, 1970, p. 58.

Error , Question , Time

“One can meet all the emotional requisites of a human—except for the assurance that you’ll find a life after death—without the superstitions of religion.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. xxi

Life , Religion

“We have classical associations and great names of our own which we can confidently oppose to the most splendid of ancient times. Senate has not to our ears a sound so venerable as Parliament. We respect the Great Charter more than the laws of Solon. The Capitol and the Forum impress us with less awe than our own Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey…The list of warriors and statesmen by whom our constitution was founded or preserved, from De Montfort down to Fox, may well stand a comparison with the Fasti of Rome. The dying thanksgiving of Sydney is as noble as the libation which Thrasea poured to Liberating Jove: and we think with far less pleasure of Cato tearing out his entrails than of Russell saying, as he turned away from his wife, that the bitterness of death was past.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

' History https://www.gutenberg.org/files/55901/55901-h/55901-h.htm', Edinburgh Review (May 1828)

Pleasure , Law , Confidence , Thinking

“Odds that you will die at some point in your life: 1 in 1. Thus, you might say the greatest, most significant, and universal risk factor in death is being born. This implies that it really isn't very helpful to approach the subject of risk by focusing on how we might die; rather, it's far wise to consider how we should live and what risk we will live with.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 67

Life , Universe , Help

“For what do we now see in the country? We see a man who, as Senator of the United States, voted to tamper with the public mails for the benefit of slavery, sitting in the President's chair. Two days after he is seated we see a judge rising in the place of John Jay — who said, 'Slaves, though held by the laws of men, are free by the laws of God' — to declare that a seventh of the population not only have no original rights as men, but no legal rights as citizens. We see every great office of State held by ministers of slavery; our foreign ambassadors not the representatives of our distinctive principle, but the eager advocates of the bitter anomaly in our system, so that the world sneers as it listens and laughs at liberty. We see the majority of every important committee of each house of Congress carefully devoted to slavery. We see throughout the vast ramification of the Federal system every little postmaster in every little town professing loyalty to slavery or sadly holding his tongue as the price of his salary, which is taxed to propagate the faith. We see every small Custom-House officer expected to carry primary meetings in his pocket and to insult at Fourth-of-July dinners men who quote the Declaration of Independence. We see the slave-trade in fact, though not yet in law, reopened — the slave-law of Virginia contesting the freedom of the soil of New York We see slave-holders in South Carolina and Louisiana enacting laws to imprison and sell the free citizens of other States. Yes, and on the way to these results, at once symptoms and causes, we have seen the public mails robbed — the right of petition denied — the appeal to the public conscience made by the abolitionists in 1833 and onward derided and denounced, and their very name become a byword and a hissing. We have seen free speech in public and in private suppressed, and a Senator of the United States struck down in his place for defending liberty. We have heard Mr. Edward Everett, succeeding brave John Hancock and grand old Samuel Adams as governor of the freest State in history, say in his inaugural address in 1836 that all discussion of the subject which tends to excite insurrection among the slaves, as if all discussion of it would not be so construed, 'has been held by highly respectable legal authorities an offence against the peace of the commonwealth, which may be prosecuted as a misdemeanor at common law'. We have heard Daniel Webster, who had once declared that the future of the slave was 'a widespread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death', now declaring it to be 'an affair of high morals' to drive back into that doom any innocent victim appealing to God and man, and flying for life and liberty. We have heard clergymen in their pulpits preaching implicit obedience to the powers that be, whether they are of God or the Devil — insisting that God's tribute should be paid to Caesar, and, by sneering at the scruples of the private conscience, denouncing every mother of Judea who saved her child from the sword of Herod's soldiers.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Life , Men , God , World

“After the reduction of Gualiar, the King marched his army towards Malwa, reduced the fort of Bhilsa, and took the city of Oojein, where he destroyed a magnificent temple dedicated to Mahakaly, formed upon the same plan with that of Somnat. This temple is said to have occupied three hundred years in building, and was surrounded by a wall one hundred cubits in height. The image of Vikramaditya, who had been formerly prince of this country, and so renowned, that the Hindoos have taken an era from his death, as also the image of Mahakaly, both of stone, with many other figures of brass, were found in the temple. These images the King caused to be conveyed to Dehly, and broken at the door of the great mosque.”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Shamsu’d-Dîn Iltutmish (AD 1210-1236) Ujjain (Madhya Pradesh)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Country

“How could we bear, nursed as we have been in a free atmosphere, to be gagged and muzzled; to have spies, eavesdroppers and delators at every corner; to have even private conversations caught up and used against us by the Secret Police and all their agents and creatures; to be arrested and interned without trial; or to be tried by political or Party courts for crimes hitherto unknown to civil law. How could we bear to be treated like schoolboys when we are grown-up men; to be turned out on parade by tens of thousands to march and cheer for this slogan or for that; to see philosophers, teachers and authors bullied and toiled to death in concentration camps; to be forced every hour to conceal the natural workings of the human intellect and the pulsations of the human heart? Why, I say that rather than submit to such oppression, there is no length we would not go to.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at Théâtre des Ambassadeurs, Paris (24 September 1936), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 788
The 1930s

Men , Secret , Law , Nature

“He planted His cross in the midst of the mad and roaring current of selfishness, aggravated to malignity, and uttered from it the mighty cry of expiring love. And the waters heard Him, and from that moment they began to be refluent about His cross. From that moment, a current deeper and broader and mightier began to set heavenward; and it will continue to be deeper and broader and mightier till its glad waters shall encompass the earth, and toss themselves as the ocean. And not alone did earth hear the cry. It pierced the regions of immensity. Heaven heard it, and hell heard it, and the remotest star shall hear it, testifying to the love of God in His unspeakable gift, and to the supremacy of that blessedness of giving which could be reached only through death — the death of the cross.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 71.

Love , God , Star , Hell

“Gods, my gods! How sad the earth is at eventide! How mysterious are the mists over the swamps. Anyone who has wandered in these mists, who has suffered a great deal before death, or flown above the earth, bearing a burden beyond his strength knows this. Someone who is exhausted knows this. And without regret he forsakes the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, and sinks into the arms of death with a light heart knowing that death alone...”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Book Two in 'Time to Go! Time to Go!', B/O
The Master and Margarita (1967)

God , Sadness , Light , Suffering

“By necrophilia is meant love for all that is violence and destruction; the desire to kill; the worship of force; attraction to death, to suicide, to sadism; the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic by means of "order." The necrophile, lacking the necessary qualities to create, in his impotence finds it easy to destroy because for him it serves only one quality: force.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Credo (1965)

Love , Suicide

“Tolstoy's War and Peace is overblown – do yourself a favour and read his Death of Ivan Ilych.”

Philip Ó Ceallaigh (1968) Irish writer

Interview by Tom Vowler (2010-13)

War , Peace , Reading

“The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in the broadest sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can obtain only from this bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by the power of the state. The proletarian is, therefore, in law and in fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie, which can decree his life or death.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Source: (1845), p. 112

Life , Law , Sense

“He read at wine, he read in bed, He read aloud, had he the breath, His every thought was with the dead, And so he read himself to death.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"Tarquin of Cheapside"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Wine , Reading , Dead

“Intimacy is not trapped within words. It passes through words. It passes. The truth is that intimates leave the room. Doors close. Faces move away from the window. Time passes. Voices recede into the dark. Death finally quiets the voice. And there is no way to deny it. No way to stand in the crowd, uttering one’s family language.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Truth , Family , Way , Time

“Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.”

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

Hazel Grace Lancaster, p. 3 (opening words)
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Books , Thinking , Winter , Time

“He’s vain. His vanity’s hurt by the world’s refusal to accept his remedies and become immediately Enlightened. And what does a vain man do when insulted, Sir?”…“He lashes out, Sir,” says I. “He seeks to portion blame. He fumes, Sir. He attacks. In the case before us, such is his despotic power, he kills. He kills, Sir. He wars on other nations. Mary’s blood, Sir, but this poor sphere of ours suffers more from the single, frustrated egoist than from any natural—or supernatural—misery. Your own Church’s history, Sir, illustrates my point well enough, eh? We are too frequently in the power of mad children, who rage and stamp and break Kingdoms as they break toys. They order thousands of deaths a day as if they were spoiled brats kicking at their dolls!”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: The von Bek family, The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 2 (pp. 197-198; ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

War , Children , World , History

“Man alone, it seems, lives all his life in the knowledge of death. And yet there is more to life than merely waiting for death. For life to have meaning, there must be a purpose. A man must pass something on — otherwise he is useless.”

David Gemmell book Legend

Source: Drenai series, Legend, Pt 1: Against the Horde, Ch. 29

Life , Knowledge , Waiting

“There was no death row at Cold Mountain, only E Block, set apart from the other four and about a quarter their size, brick instead of wood, with a horrible bare metal roof that glared in the summer sun like a delirious eyeball.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

The Green Mile (1996)

Mountain , Sun , Summer

“Every one of those unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as of the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them that has swallowed up the whole of their Essence, and also that tendency to hate others which flows from it.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (1950)

Hate , Sense

“It has no sense and cannot just unless it comes to terms with death. Mine as (well as) that of the other. Between life and death, then, this is indeed the place of a sententious injunction that always feigns to speak the just.”

Jacques Derrida book Specters of Marx

Exordium
Specters of Marx (1993)

Life , Sense

“Without acknowledging the ever-present gaze of death, the superficial will appear important, and the important will appear superficial.”

Mark Manson (1984) American writer and blogger

Source: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (2016), Chapter 9, “...And Then You Die” (p. 206)

Appearance

““You ask a question that cannot be answered without knowing the nature of the primal chaos from which being arose. Is Spiral Castle like a crystal, once shattered, forever destroyed? That is what I prefer to believe. Or is it like a still pond, whose mirrored surface may be shattered and churned, but which will inevitably restore itself as the waves die down? You may believe this if you choose. You can even believe—why not?—that the restored universe will be an improvement on the old. For me, so long as I have my vengeance I care not what comes after.”
“And us?”
“We die.” An involuntary rise in the dragon’s voice, a slight quickening of cadence, told her that she had touched upon some unclean hunger akin to but less seemly than battle-lust. “We die beyond any chance of rebirth. You and I and all we have known will cease to be. The worlds that gave us birth, the creatures that shaped us—all will be unmade. So comprehensive will be their destruction that even their pasts will die with them. It is an extinction beyond death that we court. Though the ages stretch empty and desolate into infinity and beyond, there will be none to remember us, nor any to mourn. Our joys, sorrows, struggles, will never have been.
“And even if there is a universe to come, it will know naught of us.””

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 19 (pp. 340-341)

Hunger , Age , World , Birth

“Great God, and you witnesses of my death, I have lived as a philosopher, and I die as a Christian.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Last words, according to his friend the Prince de Ligne (Mémoires et mélanges historiques et littéraires, book IV, p. 42 http://www.google.com/books?id=upYBAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA42&q=%22Grand+Dieu%22, translated for instance in: The Freeman, p. 224 http://www.google.com/books?id=mmkQAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Great+God%22+%22and+I+die+as+a+Christian%22)

God

“On June 20, 2009, twenty-six-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan was shot to death in Iran while participating in a peaceful demonstration in Tehran. Her death became a “galvanizing symbol, both within Iran and increasingly around the world,” Rachel Maddow said on MSNBC. Video images of her plight circled the globe. The same day Roger Cohen denounced the killing on the editorial page of the New York Times. Only fifteen days later, nineteen-year-old Isis Obed Murillo was shot dead by the Honduran military during a peaceful protest in Honduras. Like Agha-Soltan’s, his death was recorded in video images that circulated on the Internet. The differential media interest in US newspaper coverage was 736-8 in favor of Agha-Soltan; the TV differential was 231-1 in favor of Agha-Soltan. The dramatic video images of Murillo’s killing never caught hold in the world beyond Honduras. The social media, which had displayed such potential for organizing protest in Iran, failed to come to life in Honduras. The Propaganda Model is as strong and applicable as it was thirty years ago. […] the performance of the MSM [mainstream media] in treating the run-up to the Iraq War, the conflict with Iran, and Russia’s alleged election “meddling” and “aggression” in Ukraine and Crimea, offer case studies of biases as dramatic as those offered in the 1988 edition of Manufacturing Consent. The Propaganda Model lives on.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

the last published words in Herman’s lifetime
Herman (2017), “Still Manufacturing Consent: The Propaganda Model at Thirty” in Roth and Huffman, eds., Censored 2018. p. 221.
2010s

Life , War , World , Peace

“You see by what has happened that we are superior to you in intelligence, in size of army, and in number of supporters. Surely you were easily trapped, captured without a struggle. It is in my power to do with you what I wish when I wish. Helpless and prostrate, you lie before us now, victims of our might. But if one looks for a punishment equal to the crimes you have committed, it is impossible to find a suitable one. You murdered your revered and benevolent old emperor, the man whom it was your sworn duty to protect. The empire of the Roman people, eternally respected, which our forefathers obtained by their valiant courage or inherited because of their noble birth, this empire you shamefully and disgracefully sold for silver as if it were your personal property. But you were unable to defend the man whom you yourselves had chosen as emperor. No, you betrayed him like the cowards you are. For these monstrous acts and crimes you deserve a thousand deaths, if one wished to do to you what you have earned. You see clearly what it is right you should suffer. But I will be merciful. I will not butcher you. My hands shall not do what your hands did. But I say that it is in no way fit or proper for you to continue to serve as the emperor's bodyguard, you who have violated your oath and stained your hands with the blood of your emperor and fellow Roman, betraying the trust placed in you and the security offered by your protection. Still, compassion leads me to spare your lives and your persons. But I order the soldiers who have you surrounded to cashier you, to strip off any military uniform or equipment you are wearing, and drive you off naked. 9. And I order you to get yourselves as far from the city of Rome as is humanly possible, and I promise you and I swear it on solemn oath and I proclaim it publicly that if any one of you is found within a hundred miles of Rome, he shall pay for it with his head.”

Septimius Severus (145–211) Emperor of Ancient Rome

Herodian, Book II.

People , Lie , Way , Intelligence

“In every unbeliever's heart there is an uneasy feeling that, after all, he may awake after death and find himself immortal. This is his punishment for his unbelief. This is the agnostic's Hell.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Feeling , Hell , Heart

“Competition-ruthless, unforgiving, to-the-death competition-is a crucial feature of capitalism.”

Jim Stanford (1961) Canadian economist

Part 3, Chapter 11, Competition, p. 129
Economics For Everyone (2008)

“A man must have something to grumble about; and if he can’t complain that his wife harries him to death with her perversity and ill-humour, he must complain that she wears him out with her kindness and gentleness.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXXII : Comparisons: Information Rejected; Ralph to Milicent

“The American death penalty exists and it withstands in America because it was a basic and constitutive element of its birth and development. Of the famous 102 «Wandering Fathers» that for first they disembarked from the «Mayflower» in that Continent not to ransack the wealths as they made Spaniards and Portuguese in Mexico and in America of the South, but to build you a new and free society, around the two bystanders they were leftovers of jail that ran away the Justice and the jails of Europe, and a bystander they were men that liberty looked for, and above all that religious. The first ones had in pocket the gun, the seconds the Bible, but in his/her Calvinist version that of the retaliation, based on the conception of a God executioner that demands the death of whom without correct motive it gives it.”

Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) Italian journalist

Corriere della Sera, 9 July 2000.
2000s - 2010s

Men , God , Justice , Penalty

“In one Eastern Shore town, a teacher reported to work one morning to find that someone had smashed the windows of her schoolhouse. Other black schools across Maryland were burned to the ground. Teachers received death threats. One was even beaten by an angry mob. But despite the risks, understand, students flocked to these schools in droves, often walking as many as eight to ten miles a day to get their education. In fact, the educational association that founded Bowie State wrote in their 1864 report that — and this is a quote — “These people are coming in beyond our ability to receive them.” Desperately poor communities held fundraisers for these schools, schools which they often built with their own hands. And folks who were barely scraping by dug deep into their own pockets to donate money.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Remarks at Bowie State University ceremony (17 May 2013) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/17/remarks-first-lady-bowie-state-university-commencement-ceremony
2010s

Money , People , Education , School