the last man QUOTES

1 " Actually, this is a poem my father once showed me, a long time ago. It has been bastardized many times, in many ways, but this is the original:The Cold Within Six men trapped by happenstance,in bleak and bitter coldEach possessed a stick of wood,or so the story's told. Their dying fire in need of logs,the first man held his back For of the faces round the fire,he noticed one was black. One man looking cross the way, saw one not of his churchAnd could not bring himself to givethe fire his stick of birch. The third one sat in tattered clothes,he gave his coat a hitchWhy should his log be put to useto warm the idle rich?The rich man just sat back and thoughtof the wealth he had in store And how to keep what he had earnedfrom the lazy, shiftless poor.The black man's face bespoke revengeas the fire passed from his sight,For all he saw in his stick of woodwas a chance to spite the white.And the last man of this forlorn groupdid naught except for gain,Giving only to those who gave,was how he played the gameThe logs held tight, in death's stillhands,was proof of human sinThey didn't die from the cold without,they died from the cold within. "

2 " How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? "

3 " When the last woman dies, the last man dies! "

4 " What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture, like some rich cloth or fur, or the petals of flowers, and everything else worthwhile. And that's as true for the last man as the first. "

― Fritz Leiber , A Pail of Air

5 " Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars. With the Model T, part of the concept of private property disappeared. Pliers ceased to be privately owned and a tire pump belonged to the last man who had picked it up. Most of the babies of the period were conceived in Model T Fords and not a few were born in them. The theory of the Anglo Saxon home became so warped that it never quite recovered. "

― John Steinbeck

6 " How would you know if you were the last man on Earth? He said.
I don't guess you would know it. You'd just be it. "

― Cormac McCarthy , The Road

7 " I always, always got to be the last man standing. "

― Scott Snyder , American Vampire, Vol. 2

8 " I once met a traveler who told me he would live to see the end of time. He laid out all his vitamins before me and told me he slept seven hours every night, no more or less. All the life you want, he said. It's all within the palm of your hand now. He said he would outlast all the wars and all the diseases, long enough to remember everything, and long enough to forget everything. He'd be the last man still standing when the sun decides to collapse upon itself and history ends. He said he had found the safest place on earth, where he could stay until the gateway to the beyond opened before him. A thousand generations from today. I pictured him there, atop a remote and snowy mountain. The heavens opening and God congratulating him for his perseverance. Asking him to join Him and watch as the sun burns down to a dull orange cinder and everything around it breaks is orbit and goes tumbling tumbling away, everything that once seemed permanent pulled apart so effortlessly, like a ball of yarn. A life into divinity.
But I knew it was a lie. I've always known it was a lie. You can not hide from the world. It will find you. It always does. And now it has found me. My split second of immortality is over. All that's left now is the end, which is all any of us ever has. "

― Drew Magary , The Postmortal

9 " Here I am at the turn of the millennium and I'm still the last man to have walked on the moon, somewhat disappointing. It says more about what we have not done than about what we have done. "

10 " We have peace with Israel. We're actually the last man standing. So there is going to be immense pressure and people asking, 'Why are we having this relationship when it's not benefiting anybody?' Obviously, my answer is you always benefit from peace. "