It is better to burn out than fade away

"It is better to burn out than to fade away". It's a reference to a candle or a fire. Burning out is a metaphor for living an exciting, ambitious life; one where you expend all of your energy early on, possibly even dying young like many rock stars. Fading away would be to simply live safely, not take any risks, etc. Basically living a long but boring life that doesn't impact anyone else. This quote has a similar sentiment to the Dylan Thomas' poem, which says, “Do not go gentle into that good night/but rage, Rage!, at the dying of the light.”

The first time I'd read this (and loved it enough to have it on my wallpaper for a couple years!), my interpretation was in the context of 'working hard'. Of course it is as applicable to non-work related stuff/passions, as it is to work. Perhaps its more like describing the implementation stage of 'stay hungry, stay foolish'; suggesting that burning yourself out doing something is more rewarding. (and though through years some not so positive connotations for this phrase have also popped up in my mind, this is the interpretation I like to remember).

Those words Neil Young penned — and so many others have echoed : the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, Def Lepard, others — simply means you should hang onto your dreams and beliefs for as long as you can, until they destroy your life and sanity and make a husk of your former self, rather than simply give up and capitulate to larger social forces which seek to normalize you and destroy your creative spirit. The symbolism suggests, contrary to traditional Christian (catholic) dogmas, that Hell is preferable to Purgatory, that one should burn and suffer rather than fade into insignificance and be forgotten.

The meat of it suggests it is better to try with all your might and fail, rather than giving up. A similar sentiment from Alfred Lord Tennyson says, “'This better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” If you think of love as passion for whatever you do, then the statements hold the same meaning. I first saw it as a line written in the suicide note of Kurt Cobain. At that point, I had no idea about it being in some song too. My first impression was that it's better to ‘burn out' - to die, or to vanish than being forgotten. Than fading slowly from this world. Than losing the power or the attention or your sanity.

Well things like that are open to interpretation, but I would assume it means to go out with a bang rather than weakly fading into nothing (a whimper). Some people like Jimi, Janis, and Jim Morrison to name a few will always be remembered for their youth. They lived their lives recklessly and it killed them; but not before they made their mark in the world. But we will never think about them as faded relics of days gone by. You should be able to name them; they're always coming to town and making fools of themselves. Its better to have burned brightly and disappear quickly than to simply be forgotten. Neil Young wrote it in response to many contemporaries dying young.

This line is always close to me. In life we really don't know what's next.Personally, i guess this means it would be good to be far,very far at once from someone you are close rather than being slowly. I know its kind of a difficult one (hurts like hell) but it is the only way and the best way you can do for their good. Similar was the case for Nirvana front man,when he committed suicide, the same lyric was found written in his note.

Taken from Hindu philosophy which says that it is better to give everything and burn bright for an instant than to lie in the shadows for eternity. In this case it might mean (arguably) taking birth, exhausting yourself like a flame in this life, consequently endowing the world with one’s form of a great deed or act (through some kind of toiling/sacrificing in arriving at his truths/music) and returning to another life (or lives), possibly having the rare chance to carry out a similar (but excruciably taxing) great act, or lie in the shadows of convenience forever.

Maybe it is the exhaustion of the soul that he is hinting at and his consequent retreat into the cycle of births/rebirths. Just to make it clear, I don’t think Kurt took his own life with all the shoddy police work surrounding his death and other details. It might be that the note had nothing to do with his death. Moreover, in spite of Kurt’s proclivities to Eastern thought, it might have been just taken. The inherent pathos of the statement might have been a casual lamentation about life. Cheers!