Pragmatism and the Outlook of Modern Science (1966)
“Old soldiers never die, they just fade away. ”
Audio clip (ogg format)
1950s, Farewell address to Congress (1951)
Context: I am closing my 52 years of military service. When I joined the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams. The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that "old soldiers never die; they just fade away."
And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty.
“It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out.”
Playboy interview (1980)
Context: It's better to fade away like an old soldier than to burn out. I don't appreciate worship of dead Sid Vicious or of dead James Dean or of dead John Wayne. It's the same thing. Making Sid Vicious a hero, Jim Morrison — it's garbage to me. I worship the people who survive. Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo.
Audio clip (ogg format)
1950s, Farewell address to Congress (1951)
“I didn’t know that painters and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.”
“I feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture.”
Source: A Severed Head
“Surely 't is better, when summer is over
To die when all fair things are fading away.”
I'd be a Butterfly, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)
