Willingness to Die Quotes

[W]hat makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy.

The Vietnamese have a secret weapon. It's their willingness to die beyond our willingness to kill. In effect, they've been saying, You can kill us, but you'll have to kill a lot of us; you may have to kill all of us. And, thank heaven, we are not yet ready to do that.

The egocentric is always frustrated, simply because the condition of self-perfection is self-surrender. There must be a willingness to die to the lower part of self, before there can be a birth to the nobler.

The Christian message, like an ecosystem, is about process. In an ecological sense, the cross symbolizes a willingness to die so that the continuation of life might be served. Now we must extend our love to the unborn if we are to serve eternal life.

MARTYR, One who moves along the line of least reluctance to a desired death.

No one can avoid death; it is inevitable. Therefore, I should create in my mind a kind of willingness and accepting for that event without any fear.

In any conflict, the opposing side wants to kill each other, but survive, in order to savor the fruits of victory. But when you have people who are willing to die, they don't want to savor the victory themselves. That willingness to die creates a whole new dynamic. And that, the world has to come to terms with. We have to decide how to deal with that. That activity makes the threat of nuclear terrorism or bioterrorism much more severe, because people who are handling that are not afraid to die, because they think they are going to go to heaven. And that fearlessness about one's own self-preservation creates a totally different situation.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.