State Funeral Quotes

I want a state funeral with bells ringing across the land! Then I'd love the congregation to do the hokey cokey and for can-can girls to dance down the aisle. I've already bought the plot in Worcestershire next to my parents.

The King had been a good friend of the government and the people of South Africa and we all mourn his passing with our brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia.

It was appointed by law in Athens, that the obsequies of the citizens who fell in battle should be performed at the public expense, and in the most honorable manner.

To plot is to live. […] We start out lives in chaos, in babble. As we surge up into the world, we try to devise a shape, a plan. There is dignity in this. Your whole life is a plot, a scheme, a diagram. It is a failed scheme but that's not the point. To plot is to affirm life, to seek shape and control. Even after death, most particularly after death, the search continues. Burial rites are an attempt to complete the scheme, in ritual. Picture a state funeral, Jack. It is all precision, detail, order, design. The nation holds its breath. - (WN 292)

By the way, I don't mean to pick nits here, but Obama has just ordered the flag at half-mast for 10 days for Mandela. He did not order the flag at half-mast at all for Lady Thatcher.

I've been a fascinated observer of grand public funerals since I was a kid, starting with the life-altering black-and-white images of President John F. Kennedy's funeral.

Diplomacy: lying in state.

When I was 14, during Kim Il-sung's funeral, I wondered, 'How could a god die?'

I have a hat. It is graceful and feminine and give me a certain dignity, as if I were attending a state funeral or something. Someday I may get up enough courage to wear it, instead of carrying it.

The children of Qunu stood for hours on the side of a brand new stretch of highway as they waited for the hearse carrying Nelson Mandela to come into view.