I think when you see an aircraft fire, these angry, black puffs of smoke, knowing that one of them could kill you that you – you – you understand the seriousness of the mission. And you understand your own mortality.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

I don’t expect to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Dying is a wild night and a new road.

Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.

Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

There is nothing better than getting shot at and missed. It’s really great.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don’t kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.

Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous.

The body politic, as well as the human body, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries itself the causes of its destruction.

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

It is natural to die as to be born.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.

The Iranian government is undoubtedly a severe danger to its own population, but not beyond that.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

Life is so, so short. Bible says it’s like a vapor.

In this world there is always danger for those who are afraid of it.

It’s fun to be hopelessly in love. It’s dangerous, but it’s fun.

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

Red is such an interesting color to correlate with emotion, because it’s on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you’ve got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger and frustration.

Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

In all my wild mountaineering, I have enjoyed only one avalanche ride; and the start was so sudden, and the end came so soon, I thought but little of the danger that goes with this sort of travel, though one thinks fast at such times.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.