Recommended quotes page 10
“Cowards die a thousand deaths, but the brave only die once.”
Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms
Source: A Farewell to Arms
Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor
Variant: Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.
“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Variants: One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic.<br>A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.<br>When one dies, it is a tragedy. When a million die, it is a statistic.<br>In Портрет тирана (1981) (Portrait of a Tyrant), Soviet historian Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko attributes the following version to Stalin: "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics." This is the alleged response of Stalin during the 1943 Tehran conference when Churchill objected to an early opening of a second front in France.<!-- The book appears to have a footnote sourceing the claim, but I couldn't access it. Could someone please try to scare up a paper copy and have a look at footnote 188? --><br>In her review "Mustering Most Memorable Quips" of Konstantin Dushenko's 1997 Dictionary of Modern Quotations (Словарь современных цитат: 4300 ходячих цитат и выражений ХХ века, их источники, авторы, датировка), Julia Solovyova states: "Russian historians have no record of the lines, 'Death of one man is a tragedy. Death of a million is a statistic,' commonly attributed by English-language dictionaries to Josef Stalin."<br>This quotation may originate from "Französischer Witz" (1925) by Kurt Tucholsky: "Darauf sagt ein Diplomat vom Quai d'Orsay: «Der Krieg? Ich kann das nicht so schrecklich finden! Der Tod eines Menschen: das ist eine Katastrophe. Hunderttausend Tote: das ist eine Statistik!»" ("To which a Quai d'Orsay diplomat replies: «The war? I can't find it so terrible! The death of one man: that is a catastrophe. One hundred thousand deaths: that is a statistic!»")<br>Another possible source or intermediary may be the concluding words of chapter 8 of the 1956 novel The Black Obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque: "Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik." ("But probably the reason is that one dead man is death—and two million are only a statistic." 1958 Crest Book reprint)<br>Mary Soames (daughter of Churchill) claims to have overheard Stalin deliver a variant of the quote in immediate postwar Berlin (Remembrance Sunday Andrew Marr interview BBC 2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hP2tpw9XEw<br>See also Jean Rostand, Thoughts of a Biologist, 1939: "Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."<br>In an interview given for the 1983 three-part documentary Der Prozeß by Norddeutscher Rundfunk on the Third Majdanek trial, Simon Wiesenthal attributes the quote to the unpublished auto-biography of Adolf Eichmann. According to Wiesenthal, Eichmann had been asked by another member of the Reich Main Security Office during WWII what they should answer would they be questioned after the war about the millions of dead Jews they were responsible for, to which Eichmann according to his own testimony had replied with the quote. <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Variant: The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
“However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
“The essence of true friendship is to make allowance for another's little lapses.”
Ovid (-43–17 BC) Roman poet
“The friendship that can cease has never been real.”
Amicitia quae desinere potest vera numquam fuit.
Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church
Letter 3
Letters
“Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.”
Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.
“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
“Friendship is the shadow of the evening, which increases with the setting sun of life.”
Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.
Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Often attributed to Stalin, there is not a single source which show that Stalin said this at any given time. There is only one source outside the blogosphere which attributes the quote to Stalin, but does not provide any evidence for the attribution. That source is the book Quotations for Public Speakers : A Historical, Literary, and Political Anthology (2001), p. 121 by the former US senator Robert Torricelli.
Misattributed