Sign in with your pod

Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina

Death

LoveFriendshipHappinessHopeFearCourageDeathLifeTimeWarPeaceFreedomTruthWisdomKnowledgeScienceArtMusicNatureMoneyWorkPowerGodBeautyLaughterFamilySuccess and failureChangeDreamsBooks and reading

• “If you can watch much television, then being dead will be a cinch. Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.”

  Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If the living are haunted by the dead. Then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes.”

  Chuck Palahniuk (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It's hard to understand; There was love in this man. I'm sure all would agree That his misery Was his woman and things. Now Freddie's dead; That's what I said.Everybody's misused him; Ripped him off and abused him. Another junkie playin'; Pushin' dope for the man. A terrible blow, but that's how it go. Freddie's on the corner now. If you wanna be a junkie, wow; Remember, Freddie's dead.”

  Curtis Mayfield (1942–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “When you're dead you're dead.”

  Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Introduction (1966)

• “One year ago, our country was dead. We were absolutely dead. Our country was ready to fail. Totally fail. Now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world. And that’s said by every single leader that I’ve spoken to over the last five months.”

  Donald Trump (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Dark and sad will be the hour to this nation when it forgets to pay grateful homage to its greatest benefactors. The offering we bring to-day is due alike to the patriot soldiers dead and their noble comrades who still live; for, whether living or dead, whether in time or eternity, the loyal soldiers who imperiled all for country and freedom are one and inseparable.”

  Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “All of a sudden I had to remember some words that Marlowe had told me over fifteen years ago: "Dead men don't wear plaid." Hmm... Dead men don't wear plaid. I still don't know what it means.”

  Steve Martin (born 1945) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As Rigby Reardon in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)

• “You've seen three people drop dead and you saw them resurrected. Their attitudes were prejudiced and they would drop dead, but I resurrected them. And I've done it sixty-three times in eleven months this year in a public meeting.”

  Jim Jones (1931–1978) said by 1978 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speaking to his followers, quoted in Walliss 2004, p. 49, Chidester 1988, p. 58

• “I like to be surrounded by joy and life, and I know nothing more joyless and deader than a dead fish. Multiply that dead fish by a million, and you have an environment which only a Dante could contemplate with equanimity.”

  P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The dead do not suffer. And if they live again, their lives will surely be as good as ours. We have no fear. We are all children of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us all. We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living, hope for the dead.”

  Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity (in the Harvard sense) of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we’re dead we’re dead?”

  John Updike (1932–2009) said by 2009 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic.”

  Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The important thing is to get yourself born. You’re entitled to that. But you’re not entitled to life. Because if you were entitled to life, then the life would have to be quantified. How many years? Seventy? Sixty? Shakespeare was dead at fifty-two. Keats was dead at twenty-six. Thomas Chatterton at seventeen.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “But what if no one's watching? What if when we're dead, we are just dead? What if there's no time to lose? What if there's things we gotta do, Things that need to be said?”

  Ani DiFranco (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Poetry is dead and buried in a world of growing LitVid and illiteracy, vidiocy I’ve heard it called. Being dead, poetry has enormous freedom; being ignored, it can blossom like a rose in a manure heap. Poetry is risen. Poetry is the messiah of literature but the angel has not yet told anybody it is risen.”

  Greg Bear (1951–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “And the rest, all the rest. All the days and lights and winds and years that would have been, and that would not be, that should be and were not, because he was dead. Shot dead on the road, in the wind, at twenty-one. His mountains unclimbed, never to be climbed.”

  Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Glenn used to say the reason you can’t really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, “I’ll be dead,” you’ve said the word I, and so you’re still alive inside the sentence. And that’s how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul — it was a consequence of grammar.”

  Margaret Atwood (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Eleven dead bodies. One dead cat. No breasts.”

  Joe Bob Briggs (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “So much to do, there's plenty on the farm; I'll sleep when I'm dead. Saturday night I like to raise a little harm; I'll sleep when I'm dead.”

  Warren Zevon (1947–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “But thou shalt ever lie dead, nor shall there be any remembrance of thee then or thereafter, for thou hast not of the roses of Pieria; but thou shalt wander obscure even in the house of Hades, flitting among the shadowy dead.”

  Sappho (651–570 BC) said by 570 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Fr. 55 Voigt (tr. H. T. Wharton, 1887)

• “With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand... hopeless from the start.”

  Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (July 8, 1950)

• “You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can't care anyway.”

  Steve Biko (1946–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I am dead,” said Corum, “and would be grateful if you would allow me to be dead in peace.”

  Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We are dead men. Dead men should be quiet in their graves, but they never are.”

  Robert Jordan (1948–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The boy was dead eager, which could soon lead to plain dead.”

  Robert Jordan (1948–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Ravens and crows. Rats. Mists and clouds. Insects and corruption. Strange events and odd occurences. The ordinary twisted and strange. Wonders. The dead are beginning to walk and some see them. Others do not, but more and more, we all fear the night. These have been our days. They rain upon us beneath a dead sky, crushing us with their fury, until as one, we beg, "Let it begin.”

  Robert Jordan (1948–2007) first seen 1000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Journal of the Unknown Scholar, entry for the Feast of Freia, 1000 NE

• “I don't rap for dead presidents, I'd rather see the president dead”

  Eminem (born 1972) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: We As Americans" (2004)

• “The Spirit is not dead, proclaim the word, Where lay dead bones, a host of armed men stand! I ope your graves, my people, saith the Lord, And I shall place you living in your land.”

  Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The most legitimate instances of communication between the living and the dead occur in an intimate personal framework in which a dead parent makes contact with its offspring; a husband or wife freshly out of physical reality appears to his or her mate. But very seldom do historic personages make contact except with their own intimate circles.”

  Jane Roberts (1929–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Skin head Dead head, Everybody gone bad, Situation, Aggravation , Everybody allegation, In the suite, On the news, Everybody dogfood, Bang Bang, Shot dead, Everybody gone mad ,”

  Michael Jackson (1958–2009) said by 2009 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Dead ground is the territory you can’t judge the extent of until you approach it: seen from a distance, it is unseen. Almost uniquely amongst imagined countries, Tolstoy’s psychological landscape is without dead ground — the entire vista of human experience is lit up with an equal, shadowless intensity, so that separateness and clarity continue even to the horizon.”

  Clive James (1939–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The victors and the vanquished then the storm it tossed and tore, As hard they strove, those worn-out men, upon that surly shore; Dead Nelson and his half-dead crew, his foes from near and far, Were rolled together on the deep that night at Trafalgar.”

  Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There are some who call Yiddish a dead language, but so was Hebrew called for two thousand years. It has been revived in our time in a most remarkable, almost miraculous way. Aramaic was certainly a dead language for centuries but then it brought to light the Zohar, a work of mysticism of sublime value.”

  Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Every book, remember, is dead until a reader activates it by reading. Every time that you read you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies. Aeneas did. Odysseus did. Listen to Delany, a prophet.”

  Kathy Acker (1947–1997) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On Delany the Magician", a foreword to Trouble on Triton (1996) by Samuel R. Delany, and reprinted in Acker's collection Bodies of Work (1996)

• “The democratic world has come to a dead end; likewise, the communist world has come to a dead end. But the Unification Church is just beginning!”

  Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Creation Of The Fatherland, 1984-01-01

• “This difference is the ultimate distinction between Stalin and Trotsky. In Stalin, 'Lenin lives for ever' as an obscene spirit which 'does not know it is dead', artificially kept alive as an instrument of power. In Trotsky, the dead Lenin continues to live like Joe Hill he lives wherever there are people who still struggle for the same Idea”

  Slavoj Žižek (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Odysseus returned at last, neither dead nor alive, somehow still attached to this ruined corpse—a spirit perhaps unwanted among spirits and forced to remain in the dead house of its body.”

  Whitley Strieber (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “You sons of bitches. I just hate you. I hate you to the depths of my soul. I will hate you when I'm dead. I will hate you a million years after I'm dead. I will still hate you. My hate will be a star in the firmament that will shine down on your Republican asses forever. That's how deep this hatred is, because of what you're doing to this country. Ooh, did I say all that?”

  Mike Malloy (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Once again the dead are walking in our midst- ironically, draped in the name of Marx, the man who tried to bury the dead of the nineteenth century.”

  Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life.”

  Octavia Butler (1947–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The young cult of sociology, needing a language, invented one. There are many dead languages, but the sociologists' is the only language that was dead at birth.”

  Russell Baker (1925–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Listen here, Buddy, the dead don't come back. You never have to worry about the dead hurting you. It's the living you've got to worry about in this world. (Lucy Baker, Russell Baker's mother, to Russell).”

  Russell Baker (1925–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Go to the simul and slap people around, kill people, that’s what you want. Do it! But you can’t do it out here!” It sounded great, but nobody stayed dead in a simul! How could you get any satisfaction killing somebody who didn’t stay dead?”

  Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “By many a dream of God and man my thoughts in shining flocks were led: But as I went through Patrick Street the hopes and prophecies were dead. The hopes and prophecies were dead: they could not blossom where the feet Walked amid rottenness, or where the brawling shouters stamped the street.”

  George William Russell (1867–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “So, on the bloody sand, Sohrab lay dead. And the great Rustum drew his horseman’s cloak Down o’er his face, and sate by his dead son. As those black granite pillars, once high-rear’d By Jemshid in Persepolis, to bear His house, now, mid their broken flights of steps, Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain side — So in the sand lay Rustum by his son.”

  Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) said by 1888 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The dead lay unburied, and each man as he recognized a friend among them shuddered with grief and horror; while the living whom they were leaving behind, wounded or sick, were to the living far more shocking than the dead, and more to be pitied than those who had perished.”

  Thucydides (461–395 BC) said by 395 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “If you’re dead, you're dead, so who cares.”

  Michael Winner (1935–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There is a saying of the elders' that goes, "Step from under the eaves and you're a dead man. Leave the gate and the enemy is waiting." This is not a matter of being careful. It is to consider oneself as dead beforehand.”

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659–1719) said by 1719 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Well they're breaking down doors in foreign countries, Everybody thinks somebody's hiding something. There's talk on the street and the nation is worried. But you can't talk back when you're dead, when you're dead and buried.”

  Elton John (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “My people are the Hill People. They are the men. I go into the Dead Places but I am not slain. I take the metal from the Dead Places but I am not blasted. I travel upon the god-roads and am not afraid.”

  Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) said by 1943 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

More