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Death

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“And after they have started the action will always look, as it did to the frightened men in the Federal Reserve Board in February 1929, like a decision in favor of immediate as against ultimate death. As we have seen, the immediate death not only has the disadvantage of being immediate but of identifying the executioner.”
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He had the high degree of courage so common in the human race, a race capable of conceiving death, yet able to face its probability daily, on the highway, on the obstetrics table, on the battlefield, in the air, in the subway—and to face lightheartedly the certainty of death in the end.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The death rate is the same for us as for anybody...one person, one death, sooner or later.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death is an old friend; I know him well. I lived with him, ate with him, slept with him; to meet him again does not frighten me—death is as necessary as birth, as happy in its own way.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s...a transcendental act. Making life. I thought about that when I was carrying Miles. “By this act, I bring one death into the world.” One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fall of France must have been a bitter pill to Calvé. She had a poor opinion of Germans, both as people and as artists. It is sad to imagine what her last days may have been in her "robber-baron's castle" as Peggy Wood calls it. But one thing is certain; when death came, Calvé met it with spirit. No one who knew so well how to greet life could possibly fail to know how to greet death.”
Robertson Davies (1913–1995) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Emma Calvé (1942).
“Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well.** 95”
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fortune, which had never forsaken him in his lifetime, favored the King of Sweden even in his death, with the rare privilege of falling in the fullness of his glory and an untarnished fame. By a timely death, his protecting genius rescued him from the inevitable fate of man - that of forgetting moderation in the intoxication of success, and justice in the plenitude of power.”
Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) said by 1805 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He did not consider the possibility of his own death. At his age, death was still something that happened to other people.”
Robert Silverberg (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why should that be, LuAnn? Why should we be put into such a wonderful world and then have everything taken away from us? God’s will? No, LuAnn, God is love, and God wouldn’t have done such a cruel thing to us, so therefore there is no God, there’s only death, Death, whom we must reject.”
Robert Silverberg (born 1935) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the glass of the years is brittle wherein we gaze for a span; A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man. So long I endure, no longer; and laugh not again, neither weep. For there is no God found stronger than death; and death is a sleep.”
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) said by 1909 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea of enemies is awful it makes one stop remembering eternity and the fear of death. That is what enemies are. Possessions are the same as enemies only less so, they too make one forget eternity and the fear of death.”
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) said by 1946 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had at one point this rather depressing image of some alien culture seeing the death of this planet - coming down in their spaceships and sniffing around; finding all our skeletons sitting around our TV sets and trying to work out why our end came before its time and they come to the conclusion that we amused ourselves to death.”
Roger Waters (born 1943) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Amused to Death syndicate Radio Premiere (1992).
“When life is victorious, there is birth; when it is thwarted, there is death. A warrior is always engaged in a life-and-death struggle for Peace.”
Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To live, by definition, is not something one learns. Not from oneself, it is not learned from life, taught by life. Only from the other and by death. In any case from the other at the edge of life. At the internal border or the external border, it is a heterodidactics between life and death.”
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It has no sense and cannot just unless it comes to terms with death. Mine as (well as) that of the other. Between life and death, then, this is indeed the place of a sententious injunction that always feigns to speak the just.”
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For it is only in accepting death that one can truly live, and for the human animal, death has always been the great black beast from the abyss to be dreaded or defeated or avoided or hated - but never looked upon clearly face to face.”
David Zindell (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death, so much Death! And the wretches cast it upon me. What a memory I shall leave behind if this lasts. Life is a burden to me”
Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) said by 1794 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death cannot be struggled against, brother. It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every frantic attempt to escape. Death is every mortal's shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that shadow slowly round, until what stretched behind one now stretches before him.”
Steven Erikson (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death's dry bones glowed with light in the erotic dark but he woke not nor felt the two warm bodies merge; the male worm then took heart and in his wife's ear whispered: "With one sweet kiss, dear wife, we've conquered conquering Death!”
Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) said by 1957 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Two equally steep and bold paths may lead to the same peak. To act as if death did not exist, or to act thinking every minute of death, is perhaps the same thing.”
Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) said by 1957 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Evolution discloses a meaning in death, although the meaning is like some of the berries that Darwin tasted in the Galapagos, “acid & Austere.” There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. Even Drought bears fruit. Even death is a seed.”
Jonathan Weiner (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everyone knows that time is Death, that Death hides in clocks. Imposing another time powered by the Clock of the Imagination, however, can refuse his law. Here, freed of the Grim Reaper's scythe, we learn that pain is knowledge and all knowledge pain.”
Federico Fellini (1920–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is a hot day, perhaps death is a cool night. Life is a shallow bay, perhaps death is a clear, deep sea.”
Mika Waltari (1908–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Consider his life which was valueless In terms of employment, hotel ledgers, news files. Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man. Ask. Was so much expenditure justified On the death of one so young and so silly Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death?”
Stephen Spender (1909–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In order to avoid her death, her particular death, with wrung neck and swollen tongue, she must marry the hangman.”
Margaret Atwood (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness. Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Saviour's death has set us free.”
John Chrysostom (349–407) said by 407 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death favours those that favour death.”
Nick Cave (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I saw a thing, actually-- a study that said: speaking in front of a crowd is considered the #1 fear of the average person. I found that amazing! #2 was death. Death is #2? This means, to the average person, if you have to be at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.”
Jerry Seinfeld (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.”
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Diogenes the Cynic, when a little before his death he fell into a slumber, and his physician rousing him out of it asked him whether anything ailed him, wisely answered, "Nothing, sir; only one brother anticipates another,—Sleep before Death.”
Plutarch (40–120) said by 120 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death comes in its own time, in its own way. Death is as unique as the individual experiencing it.”
Henry van Dyke (1852–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I want to break out — to leave this cycle of infection and death. I want to be taken in love: so taken that you and I, and death, and life, will be gathered inseparable, into the radiance of what we would become....”
Thomas Pynchon (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death is sweeter than continued life under tyranny. ... Retaliation is a prescription from God. ... We must rise up and kill those who kill us. .. Let them feel the pain of death that we are feeling.”
Louis Farrakhan (born 1933) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: August 15, 2015 (15 August 2015)
“The Heart is that understanding, that true consciousness, that true life that is under the extreme conditions of life and death. Therefore, it is said, that One that is, is neither born nor come to death, not alive as the limitation of form, not rendered in what appears, and yet it is the living One, than which there is no other, appearing as all of this, but eternally the same.”
Adi Da (1939–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I confess, the Amnewor is new to me. Yes, I’ve heard the name—as a minor fact in some other god’s story. Precisely what it did, though, I can’t remember. That, of course, makes it more intriguing. Death. It was associated with endless, mindless, pointless death. But which of them isn’t?”
Samuel R. Delany (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I lived long enough to see the cure for death; to see the rise of the Bitchun Society, to learn ten languages; to compose three symphonies; to realize my boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World; to see the death of the workplace and of work.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A Navy SEAL will defy death at least twice a week. When you get that kind of familiarity with death, barriers go down, and anything else seems insignificant. I don't like what happened in the navy's Tailhook scandal; I think what those officers did was wrong. But I understand why it happened. When you get a force of that many hundreds of warriors together, there's bound to be trouble.”
Jesse Ventura (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Given how many convicts awaiting capital punishment have been cleared because of DNA evidence, I no longer support the death penalty. Minnesota doesn't have this on the books, so I'm thankful that, as governor, I never had to face the decision of whether to execute someone on death row. Again, I simply don't believe that government has the inherent right to make those kinds of choices.”
Jesse Ventura (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was just a young man who'd come to town on a donkey, bored to death or something, who'd taken advantage of the chance to be entertained by a small-town kid who was bored to death, too. That's the only way I could figure it out without accepting the general theory that he was crazy.”
William Saroyan (1908–1981) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Locomotive 38, the Ojibway" (1940)
“One day in the afternoon of the world, glum death will come and sit in you, and when you get up to walk, you will be as glum as death, but if you're lucky, this will only make the fun better and the love greater.”
William Saroyan (1908–1981) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: One Day in the Afternoon of the World" (1964)
“For a while longer you may be able to carry on with your plundering and murderous crimes, but you will not escape your ultimate fate. We shall exhaust and then destroy you in a difficult and prolonged battle. When one of us falls, there are tens of others who will rise. Our death is no ordinary death and our life no ordinary life.”
Ashraf Dehghani (born 1948) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Torture and Resistance in Iran, 1971
“Since governments take the right of death over their people, it is not astonishing if the people should sometimes take the right of death over governments.”
Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) said by 1893 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The death of one god is the death of all.”
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He is the Angel of Death. Life lasts long, save for him; populations would rise up like tidal waves and inundate worlds, save for him; criminals would require trials and sentencing, save for him; and of course history might reflect unnecessary twisting and turnings, save for the Angel of Death.”
Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was too anthropomorphic to consider the lifecycle of a star as some analogy of human birth, life and death. A star was a construct of physical processes; the evolution it went through was simply a search for equilibrium stages between changing, opposing forces. There was no life or death involved, no loss or gain: just process. Why shouldn’t it be beautiful?”
Stephen Baxter (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The mode of death is sadder than death itself.”
Martial (40–104) said by 104 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well, no cannon ball did fly, no rifles cut us down. No bombs fell from the sky, no blood soaked the ground. No powder flash blinded the eye. No deathly thunder sounded. But just as sure as the hand of God, They brought death to my hometown. They brought death to my hometown.”
Bruce Springsteen (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death is a mirror which reflects the vain gesticulations of the living. The whole motley confusion of acts, occasions, regrets and hopes which is the life of each one of us finds in death, not meaning or explanation, but an end.”
Octavio Paz (1914–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The capacity for imaginative reflex, for moral risk in any human being is not limitless; on the contrary, it can be rapidly absorbed by fictions, and thus the cry in the poem may come to sound louder, more urgent, more real than the cry in the street outside. The death in the novel may move us more potently than the death in the next room.”
George Steiner (1929–2020) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To Civilize our Gentlemen" (1965).