Quotes about the dead
page 27

“Until the artist is dead, we are not able to determine his work in all its dimensions.”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

(1986) n.p.
Structures are no longer valid', in "Ein Gespräch..."

Robert Graves photo

“Trench stinks of shallow buried dead
Where Tom stands at the periscope,
Tired out. After nine months he’s shed
All fear, all faith, all hate, all hope.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Through the Periscope" (1915) [first published in 1988]
Poems

Frederick Douglass photo
Jane Austen photo
Brad Dourif photo
David Lloyd George photo

“The Duke of Devonshire issues a circular applying for subscriptions to oppose this Bill, and he charges us with the robbery of God. Why, does he not know—of course he knows—that the very foundations of his fortune are laid deep in sacrilege, fortunes built out of desecrated shrines and pillaged altars…I say that charges of this kind brought against a whole people…ought not to be brought by those whose family trees are laden with the fruits of sacrilege. I am not complaining that ancestors of theirs did it, but they are still in the enjoyment of the same property, and they are subscribing out of that property to leaflets which attack us and call us thieves. What is their story? Look at the whole story of the pillage of the Reformation. They robbed the Catholic Church, they robbed the monasteries, they robbed the altars, they robbed the almshouses, they robbed the poor, and they robbed the dead. Then they come here when we are trying to seek, at any rate to recover some part of this pillaged property for the poor for whom it was originally given, and they venture, with hands dripping with the fat of sacrilege, to accuse us of robbery of God.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1912/may/16/second-reading-fourth-days-debate in the House of Commons (12 May 1912) on the Bill to disestablish the Anglican church in Wales
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Lewis Mumford photo
Lawrence Lessig photo

“One thing we know about incentives is you can't incent a dead person. No matter what we do, Hawthorne will not produce any more works, [even if] we can give him all the money in the world.”

Lawrence Lessig (1961) American academic, political activist.

Debate http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etMwBOexmJM&t=41m with Jack Valenti at Harvard University Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society (1 October 2000)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley photo
Barry Boehm photo

“John: We're all like zombies. The spirits inside our souls are dead, thanks to Adam.”

Jack T. Chick (1924–2016) Christian comics writer

Chick tracts, " The Walking Dead? http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1076/1076_01.asp" (2011)

Chinua Achebe photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Richard Feynman photo
Lawrence M. Schoen photo

“I’m dead, Jorl. You can’t tell me what to do.”

Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist

Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 2, “Possibilities and Myths” (p. 24)

Jacques Dubochet photo

“Reasonably, all these [fossil fuel] investments are financial dead-ends or ecological disasters.”

Jacques Dubochet (1942) Nobel prize winning Swiss chemist

French: Raisonnablement, tous ces investissements [dans les énergies fossiles] sont des culs-de-sac financiers ou des catastrophes écologiques.
Source, in French: Jacques Dubochet, Parcours, Éditions Rosso, 2018, page 145 (ISBN 9782940560097).

Max Brooks photo
Curtis Mayfield photo
George William Russell photo
Thomas Browne photo
John Updike photo
Bob Dylan photo

“The ancient empty street's too dead for dreaming.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Mr. Tambourine Man

Sarah Grimké photo
Kent Hovind photo
Apollonius of Tyana photo
William Luther Pierce photo
Roger Ebert photo
Warren Zevon photo

“Life'll kill ya,
That's what I said.
Life'll kill ya,
Then you'll be dead.
Life'll find ya
Wherever you go.
Requiescat in pace
That's all she wrote.”

Warren Zevon (1947–2003) American singer-songwriter

"Life'll Kill Ya"
Life'll Kill Ya (2000)

G. K. Chesterton photo

“I know that journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones Dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.”

The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914) The Purple Wig
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

Jane Roberts photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Sara Teasdale photo

“This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead
That sparkled so the day I saw it first,
And darkened slowly after. I am she
Who loves all beauty — yet I wither it.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Helen of Troy"
Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911)

Ali Al-Wardi photo
Megyn Kelly photo

“Hold on. I realize — can, just, just — I realize something's happening in Ferguson, but we're talking about something important here, so can you at least split-screen the video? I realize — look, the protesters and the police are clashing again, alright? They’re clashing again. But we're talking about the dead— the death of an American”

Megyn Kelly (1970) American reporter

of an American who was beheaded, and Pete deserves his say.
After footage of Ferguson, Missouri police chasing protesters over the shooting of Michael Brown was aired while contributor Pete Hegseth spoke to her about ISIS beheading journalist James Foley.
2014-08-19
The Kelly File
Fox News, quoted in * 2014-08-21
Megyn Kelly Scolds Producers for Interrupting ISIS Discussion with Ferguson Video
Andrew Kirell
Media Matters for America
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/megyn-kelly-scolds-producers-for-interrupting-isis-discussion-with-ferguson-video/
2014-08-27

Donald J. Trump photo
Walter Scott photo
Jack McDevitt photo
William Ernest Henley photo

“Dear, was it really you and I?
In truth the riddle's ill to read,
So many are the deaths we die
Before we can be dead indeed.”

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

Source: Poems (1898), Rhymes And Rhythms, XV

Ben Croshaw photo
Arshile Gorky photo
James Freeman Clarke photo
Hemu photo
Philip Sidney photo
William the Silent photo

“My legal wife is to me dead; the only ecclesiastical authority I recognise pronounces me free; the attacks and threats of men do not disturb me. I am acting according to a clear conscience, and am doing hurt to no man. For my conduct, I will answer to my maker.”

William the Silent (1533–1584) stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht, leader of the Dutch Revolt

William talking about his personal life, as quoted in William the Silent (1897) by Frederic Harrison, p. 176

Mike Scott photo
Joaquin Miller photo
John Greenleaf Whittier photo

“When faith is lost, when honor dies
The man is dead!”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

Ichabod, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I was shamed into helping the unborn after 12 years of silence, in 1986. Since then, my only client has been the unborn. I don't work for a movement. I don't work for a party. I don't work for candidates. I work for the unborn, and I don't give a flying flick about what people want to do on paper with bylaws, and all that kind of stuff, because it's just like the Pharisees, who had all their rules about the Sabbath, but they didn't know that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath! I will stand for the unborn, and I will not relent! I don't know Mr. Clymer, but Howard Phillips has lost ALL of my respect, because he stands for people who want to kill ONE, only ONE, innocent child, and that's all that counts! If you want ONE innocent child, GO with this man, but I'll tell you what- I've got my paperwork filled out. All it lacks is my signature, and my wife's signature, and we're the hell out of here, if you vote to stay with a national party that will put up with ONE dead baby, much less many thousands of dead babies. And you sir [pointing at Jim Clymer] need to repent! Because the blood will be on your hands when you stand before God. You won't be able to argue about procedural votes, and keeping the party together before God! You'll be standing there quaking in your boots, wishing you'd washed yourself in the blood of the Lamb. That's all I've got to say…The only thing that matters to me is doing my job to stop the killing of the unborn.”

Paul deParrie (1949–2006) American activist

The Last Words of Paul deParrie http://www.constitutionpartyoregon.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=111&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Eric Hoffer photo
Robert Lowell photo
Homér photo

“By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man—
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—
than rule down here over all the breathless dead.”

XI. 489–492 (tr. Robert Fagles); Achilles' ghost to Odysseus.
Alexander Pope's translation:
: Rather I'd choose laboriously to bear
A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air,
A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread,
Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead.
With many a weary step, and many a groan,
Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone;
The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground. P. S. Worsley's translation:
: Rather would I, in the sun's warmth divine,
Serve a poor churl who drags his days in grief,
Than the whole lordship of the dead were mine.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

Emma Goldman photo
Periyar E. V. Ramasamy photo

“Foreigners are sending messages to the planets. We are sending rice and cereals to our dead fore-father through the Brahmins. It is a wise deed?”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Veeramani, Collected Works of Periyar, p. 511.
Rationalism

Louis C.K. photo
Iain Banks photo
Trevor Baylis photo

“As they say, art is pleasure, invention is treasure, and this nation has got to recognise that. If they can spend a fortune on dead sheep and formaldehyde, then it can spend a bit more of that money on inventors.”

Trevor Baylis (1937–2018) English inventor

Cited in: Jonathan Sutherland, ‎Diane Canwell (2008), Essential Business Studies A Level: AS Student Book for AQA. p. 23

Roberto Bolaño photo
Dana Gioia photo

“What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Unsaid" http://www.danagioia.net/poems/unsaid.htm
Poetry, Interrogations at Noon (2001)

“Keynes is dead; dynamic programming; Keynes is still dead. That’s the way Stanford graduate economics students recently summed up what they had learned in their core graduate macroeconomics course.”

David Colander (1947) American economist

David Colander, "The Keynesian Method, Complexity, and the Training of Economists" (2009)
2000s

Du Fu photo
Asger Jorn photo

“There can be no question of selecting in any direction, but of a penetrating the whole cosmic law of rhythms, forces and material that are the real world, from the ugliest to the most beautiful, everything that has character and expression, from the crudest and most brutal to the gentlest and most delicate; everything that speaks to us in its capacity as life. From this it follows that one must know all in order to be able to express all. It is the abolition of the aesthetic principle. We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions; we have never had any. What we have and what is our strength, is our joy in life; our interest in life, in all its amoral aspects. That is also the basis of our contemporary art. We do not even know the laws of aesthetics. That old idea of selection according to the beauty-principle Beautiful — Ugly, like to ethical Noble — Sinful, is dead for us, for whom the beautiful is also ugly and everything ugly is endowed with beauty. Behind the comedy and the tragedy we find only life's dramas uniting both; not in noble heroes and false villains, but people.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

Variant translations:
What we possess and what gives us strength is our joy in life, our interest in life in all its amoral facets. This is also the foundation for today's art. We do not even know the aesthetic laws.
We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions; we have never had any. What we have, and what constitutes our strength, is our joy in life, in all of its moral and amoral manifestations.
1940 - 1948, Intimate Banalities' (1941)

Joseph Strutt photo
Erwin Schrödinger photo

“If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

On the conditions of the "Schrödinger's cat" thought-experiment, as presented in The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics (1935), translated by John D. Trimmer http://www.tu-harburg.de/rzt/rzt/it/QM/cat.html

Alfred Stieglitz photo

“I know exactly what I have photographed [in his series 'Equivalents', 1925 - 1934]. I know I have done something that has never been done... I also know that there is more of the really abstract in some 'representation' than in most of the dead representations of the so-called abstract so fashionable now.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

In a letter about his 'Equivalents' to w:Hart Crane; as quoted in Photography as High Art, Hilton Kramer, (1982-12-19)., in 'New York Times'. p. 1. Retrieved 2008-12-26; as quoted on Wikipedia.

Simon Schama photo
J.M. Coetzee photo
Georges Clemenceau photo

“In fifteen years I will be dead, but if you do me the honour of visiting my tomb, you will be able to say that the Germans have not fulfilled all the clauses of the treaty, and that we are still on the Rhine.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Remarks to Poincaré in Cabinet (25 April 1919), quoted in David Robin Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), p. 352.
Prime Minister

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis photo
Heather Brooke photo

“A lack of government oversight hasn't hindered the internet. Quite the opposite. A hands-off approach is largely responsible for its fantastic growth and success. The tremendous innovation and economic boon produced by the free internet should be proof enough that the dead hand of government isn't needed.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/20/we-should-all-be-hactivists "We should all be hacktivists now", Column in the Guardian, 20 April 2012.
Attributed, In the Media

Samuel Rogers photo
Terry Gilliam photo
Christina Rossetti photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo
Jeanette Winterson photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Aron Ra photo
Jayapala photo
Eddie Izzard photo

“Agatha Christie? We go back years, me and Ag. She's a … she's just a … she's dead, isn't she?”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

Live at the Ambassadors (1993)

Bruce Springsteen photo

“They found him shot dead outside Stockton,
His body lyin' on a muddy hill.
Nothin' taken, nothin' stolen;
Somebody killed him just to kill.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"The New Timer"
Song lyrics, The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995)

Samuel Hahnemann photo
Isaac Leib Peretz photo

“The song that from the heart would spring
Is dead for want of echoing.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

In Alien Lands, translated by Leah W. Leonard.

Géza Vermès photo
Odilo Globocnik photo

“This is one of the most highly secret matters there are, perhaps the most secret. Anybody who speaks about it is shot dead immediately. Two talkative people died yesterday.”

Odilo Globocnik (1904–1945) SS officer

To Kurt Gerstein, 17 August 1942. Quoted in "Genocide, Critical Issues of the Holocaust" - Page 455 - by Alex Grobman, Daniel Landes, Sybil Milton - History - 1983.

Clifford D. Simak photo

““You sound like a rugged individualist,” said Webster.
“You say that like you think it’s funny,” yapped the mayor.
“I do think it’s funny,” said Webster. “Funny, and tragic, that anyone should think that way today.”
“The world would be a lot better off with some rugged individualism,” snapped the mayor. “Look at the men who have gone places—”
“Meaning yourself?” asked Weber.
“You might take me, for example,” Carter agreed. “I worked hard. I took advantage of opportunity. I had some foresight. I did—”
“You mean you licked the correct boots and stepped in the proper faces,” said Webster. “You’re the shining example of the kind of people the world doesn’t want today. You positively smell musty, your ideas are so old. You’re the last of the politicians, Carter, just as I was the last of the Chamber of Commerce secretaries. Only you don’t know it yet. I did. I got out. Even when it cost me something, I got out, because I had to save my self-respect. Your kind of politics is dead. They are dead because any tinhorn with a loud mouth and a brassy front could gain power by appeal to mob psychology. And you haven’t got mob psychology any more. You can’t have mob psychology when people don’t give a damn what happens to a thing that’s dead already—a political system that broke down under its own weight.””

Source: City (1952), Chapter 1, “City” (pp. 34-35)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Dark night,
Oh terrible is thy shadow on the battle!
Blows dealt alike on friend and foe, the dead,
And dying trampled on— oh, day alone
Should look upon the soldier's deeds!”

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

(1st February 1823) The Cadets. An Indian Sketch
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Charlton Heston photo
Sukarno photo