death is the great leveler

death is the great leveler

proverb Death makes everyone equal because everyone is susceptible to death. All of us on this planet are playing the same game. Death is the great leveler.
See also: death, great
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

Death is the great leveler.

Prov. Death makes everyone equal, because it does not spare anyone, not even the wealthy, famous, or talented. (Also the cliché: the great leveler, death.) The wealthy tycoon lived as though he were exempt from every law, but death is the great leveler and came to him the same as to everyone else. We hoped that the brilliant pianist would entertain us with her music for many decades, but death, the great leveler, did not spare her.
See also: death, great
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • like death warmed over
  • between life and death
  • from the dead
  • dance with death
  • have (someone's) blood on (one's) head
  • sign (someone's) death warrant
  • sign someone's death warrant
  • snatch
  • be snatched from the jaws of death
  • be snatched out of the jaws of death
References in periodicals archive
Death is the great leveler. People believe different things about what happens when we die--heaven or hell, reincarnation, nothingness.
The longest day: what happens when I die?
They convey a sense of both the universality of death and the complicated private process of dying, and they remind us that death is the great leveler: it brings everyone, whether young, old, white, or black, into that mythical state of equality.
Death in Equality