“We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.”

—  Bill Hicks

Last update Feb. 24, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free." by Bill Hicks?
Bill Hicks photo
Bill Hicks100
American comedian 1961–1994

Related quotes

Ray Bradbury photo

“The gift of life is so precious that we should feel an obligation to pay back the universe for the gift of being alive.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Speech at Eureka College (1997)

Baruch Spinoza photo

“A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”
Homo liber de nulla re minus, quam de morte cogitat, et ejus sapientia non mortis, sed vitae meditatio est.

Baruch Spinoza book Ethics

Part IV, Prop. LXVII
Ethics (1677)

Tim Powers photo

“We should all be getting insanity danger pay.”

Tim Powers (1952) American writer

Source: Stolen Skies (2022), Chapter 7, “Spiritual Danger Pay” (p. 89)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo

“Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Lotos-Eaters

Choric Song, st. 4
The Lotos-Eaters (1832)
Context: Death is the end of life; ah, why
Should life all labour be?
Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,
And in a little while our lips are dumb.
Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.

Ghalib photo

“The prison of life and the bondage of grief are one and the same.
Before the onset of death, why should man expect to be free of grief?”

Ghalib (1797–1869) Urdu-Persian poet

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“If physical death is the price that some must pay to free their children and their white brothers from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.”

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

1960s, Keep Moving From This Mountain (1965)

Alan Watts photo

“What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained—though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 96

Ernest Becker photo

“The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

The Denial of Death (1973)
Source: "Human Character as a Vital Lie", p. 66

“Death is forever. Death is nothing. But to save a life, that’s everything.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

Related topics