Source: Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace
“Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”
Aeschylus (-525–-456 BC) ancient Athenian playwright
This is usually attributed to Emiliano Zapata, but sometimes to Aeschylus, who is credited with expressing similar sentiments in Prometheus Bound: "For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life".
Misattributed
“But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.”
D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love
Source: Women in Love (1920), Ch. 15
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor
Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author
Letter to Gerald "Ching" Tyrrell, (11 November 1956), p. 28
1990s, The Proud Highway : The Fear and Loathing Letters Volume I (1997)
Context: Hopes rise and dreams flicker and die. Love plans for tomorrow and loneliness thinks of yesterday. Life is beautiful and living is pain. The sound of music floats down a dark street.
“It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die.”
Steve Biko (1946–1977) anti-apartheid activist in South Africa
Quoted in Scott MacLeod, "South Africa: Extremes in Black and Whites" http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,975037,00.html, Time, March 9, 1992, p. 38 <br class="br">Quoted in "The Mind of Black Africa" (1996) by Dickson A. Mungazi, p. 159
“Better to die than to live in fear.”
Christopher Paolini book Inheritance
Roran, on the cause of the Varden
Inheritance (2011)
“[F]orgive me if this sounds pompous, but it’s better to die standing up than live on your knees.”
Alexey Navalny (1976) Russian anti-corruption activist
Source: As quoted in "Net Impact: One man's cyber-crusade against Russian corruption" http://archive.is/FGqQE (4 April 2011), by Julia Ioffe, The New Yorker
