Stronger than pain quotes (page 176) | Quotes of famous people

“It is wiser to abstain than to repent.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha

“Appetite is better than surfeit.”

James Howell (1594–1666) Anglo-Welsh historian and writer

Lexicon Tetraglotton (1660)

“The half is greater than the whole.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor

Hesiod, in Works and Days
Misattributed

“It is easier to be generous than to be just.”

Elizabeth Bibesco (1897–1945) writer, actress; Romanian princess

Haven (1951)

“People are stupider than anybody.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

AV Club interview (2000)

“To be a bandit is better than to be a slave!”

Samuel R. Delany book Neveryóna

Source: Neveryóna (1983), Chapter 4, “Of Fate, Fortune, Mayhem, and Mystery” (p. 86)

“Wars worse than civil.”
Bella...plus quam civilia.

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

Book I, line 1 (tr. Christopher Marlowe).
Pharsalia

“It's Easier Than We Think.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

Breaking Through Power (2016)

“No is a bigger word than I.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy: Volume 2 (2022)

“It’s better to be happy than in pursuit of it.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy: Volume 2 (2022)

“It is better to buy than compete.”

Mark Zuckerberg (1984) American internet entrepreneur

'It's better to buy than compete': The FTC is using Mark Zuckerberg's own words against him https://www.businessinsider.com/ftc-facebook-lawsuit-makes-zuckerberg-emails-public-instagram-whatsapp-competition-2020-12" (2008)

“I'd rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.”

Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919) Mexican Revolutionary

Prefiero morir de pie que vivir de rodillas.
As quoted in Liberation Theologies in North America and Europe‎ (1979) by Gerald H. Anderson and Thomas F. Stransky, p. 281; this is sometimes misattributed to the more modern revolutionary, Che Guevara, and to "La Pasionaria" Dolores Ibárruri, especially in Spain, where she popularized it in her famous speeches during the Spanish Civil War, to José Martí, and to Aeschylus who is credited with a similar declaration in Prometheus Bound: "For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life." The phrase "better that we should die on our feet rather than live on our knees" was spoken by François-Noël Gracchus Babeuf in his defence of the Conspiracy of Equals in April 1797. In French it read, 'Ne vaut-il pas mieux emporter la gloire de n'avoir pas survecu a la servitude?' but translated this bears no resemblance whatever to the quote under discussion. see: The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf Before the High Court of Vendome (1967), edited and translated by John Anthony Scott, p. 88 and p. 90, n. 12.
Spanish variants:
¡Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!
I'd prefer to die standing, than to live always on my knees.
As quoted in Operación Cobra : historia de una gesta romántica (1988) by Alvaro Pablo Ortiz and Oscar Lara, p. 29
Variant translations:
Men of the South! It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
With an extension, as quoted in Timeless Mexico (1944) by Hudson Strode, p. 259
I would rather die standing than live on my knees!
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
I prefer to die standing than to live forever kneeling.
Prefer death on your feet to living on your knees.

“It is only at first that pity, like morphine, is a solace to the invalid, a remedy, a drug, but unless you know the correct dosage and when to stop, it becomes a virulent poison. The first few injections do good, they soothe, they deaden the pain. But the devil of it is that the organism, the body, just like the soul, has an uncanny capacity for adaptation. Just as the nervous system cries out for more and more morphine, so do the emotions cry out for more and more pity, in the end more than one can give. Inevitably there comes a moment when one has to say 'no', and then one must not mind the other person's hating one more for this ultimate refusal than if one had never helped him at all. Yes, my dear Lieutenant, one has got to keep one's pity properly in check, or it does far more harm than any amount of indifference — we doctors know that, and so do judges and myrmidons of the law and pawn-brokers; if they were all to give way to their pity, this world of ours would stand still - a dangerous thing pity, a dangerous thing!”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

“An organization belongs on a sick list when promotion becomes more important to its people than accomplishment of their job they are in. It is sick when it is more concerned with avoiding mistakes than with taking risks, with counteracting the weaknesses of its members than with building on their strength. But it is sick also when "good human relations" become more important than performance and achievement.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World (1959), p. 93-94

“The demography of happiness, in this study the government found out that young people are happier than old people, and they found out that people that earn more are happier than people that earn less, and they found out that well people are happier than sick people… It took $249,000 to find out that it’s better to be rich, young and healthy than old, poor and sick.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

On US government spending. Interview on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on 01/03/1975 as shown on YouTube The Tonight Show video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNmnmdtcdcg
1970s