Physician Assisted Suicide Quotes

By establishing a social policy that keeps physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia illegal but recognizes exceptions, we would adopt the correct moral view: the onus of proving that everything had been tried and that the motivation and rationale were convincing would rest on those who wanted to end a life. ~ Ezekiel Emanuel

I think those who have a terminal illness and are in great pain should have the right to choose to end their own life, and those that help them should be free from prosecution. ~ Stephen Hawking

Americans tend to endorse the use of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia when the question is abstract and hypothetical. ~ Ezekiel Emanuel

First of all, in principle, I'm against physician-assisted suicide, and secondly, I believe it is the prerogative of the federal government to control drug rules. And the idea of using a controlled substance to end somebody's life is something I don't agree with. I can see the idea of using controlled substances to ease somebody's pain. That makes sense. ~ George W. Bush

Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia have been profound ethical issues confronting doctors since the birth of Western medicine, more than 2,000 years ago. ~ Ezekiel Emanuel

The proper response to religious opposition to choice or love or death can be reduced to a series of bumper stickers: Don't approve of abortion? Don't have one. Don't approve of gay marriage? Don't have one. Don't approve of physician-assisted suicide? For Christ's sake, don't have one. But don't tell me I can't have one - each and every one - because it offends your God. ~ Dan Savage

But the fact that, by 2012, one in thirty-five Dutch people sought assisted suicide at their death is not a measure of success. It is a measure of failure. Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end. The Dutch have been slower than others to develop palliative care programs that might provide for it. One reason, perhaps, is that their system of assisted death may have reinforced beliefs that reducing suffering and improving lives through other means is not feasible when one becomes debilitated or seriously ill. ~ Atul Gawande

Whenever the people are for gay marriage or medical marijuana or assisted suicide, suddenly the 'will of the people' goes out the window. ~ Bill Maher

Why is edamame always ready to expire? It´s so urgent for a vegetable. Edamame. It sounds like an assisted form of suicide. Is there an advertising concept in this? ~ Suzanne Finnamore

Even then, she still held a secret passion for Mozart. When he died in 1791, her grief made her provoke the people into starting the French Revolution. Stepping up to the guillotine herself, she ordered the executioner to behead her, thereby committing assisted suicide. ~ Yasutaka Tsutsui

Think of all those ages through which men have had the courage to die, and then remember that we have actually fallen to talking about having the courage to live. ~ G.K. Chesterton

With terminal illness, your fate is sealed. Morally, we're more comfortable with a situation where you don't cause death, but you hasten it. We think that's a bright line. Comparing the U.S. with Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal for patients suffering 'intolerable health problems.' ~ Arthur Caplan

There is a difference between a person who is dying and a person who is suicidal. I do not want to die. I am dying. ~ Brittany Maynard

For us, it was never about death. It was about life. Knowing that there was a way out, and that his suffering was not going to become unendurable, was the one thing that allowed Mr. Peterson to go on living, much longer than he would have otherwise wanted. It was the weeks leading up to our pact that were shrouded in darkness and despair; after its inception, life became a meaningful prospect once more. ~ Gavin Extence

I argue that in a world where people must support their opinions with evidence and reason rather than faith, we would experience less conflict over issues like assisted suicide, gay rights, birth control, and sexual morality. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

A society that believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death. A culture that has lost its faith in life cannot comprehend why it should be endured. ~ Andrew Coyne

Yolandi, the central character in the book "All My Puny Sorrows" says that "the core of the argument for it [assisted suicide] is maximizing individual autonomy and minimizing human suffering" (p. 222). ~ Miriam Toews

I'm for the death penalty, I'm pro-abortion, I'm pro-assisted suicide, I'm pro-regular suicide. Anything that'll get the traffic moving. ~ Bill Maher

I lived my whole life following others' wishes. Let me follow my own wish in my death. ~ Shon Mehta

The central argument of this book is that there is a solid moral and practical basis for the laws against assisted suicide that now exist in the United States and elsewhere. Furthermore, ~ Arthur J. Dyck

curing' victims of multiple-personality disorder is actually tantamount to serial murder. The issue has remained controversial in the wake of recent findings that the human brain can potentially contain up to one hundred forty fully-sentient personalities without significant sensory/motor impairment. The tribunal will also consider whether encouraging a multiple personality to reintegrate voluntarily - again, a traditionally therapeutic act - should be redefined as assisted suicide. Cross-linked to next item under cognition and legal. ~ Peter Watts

The whole notion of pain, and how every individual experiences pain, is up for debate. We don't know how another person experiences pain - physical pain or psychic pain. Some of these clinics where assisted suicide or euthanasia is practiced, they call it 'weariness of life.' ~ Miriam Toews

I don't mind a bit being labelled a suicide. ~ Al Purdy

A man reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes feels wearied of life, but is still so far in possession of his reason that he can ask himself whether it would not be contrary to his duty to himself to take his own life. Now he inquires whether the maxim of his action could become a universal law of nature. His maxim is: From self-love I adopt it as a principle to shorten my life when its longer duration is likely to bring more evil than satisfaction. It is asked then simply whether this principle founded on self-love can become a universal law of nature. Now we see at once that a system of nature of which it should be a law to destroy life by means of the very feeling whose special nature it is to impel to the improvement of life would contradict itself, and therefore could not exist as a system of nature; hence that maxim cannot possibly exist as a universal law of nature, and consequently would be wholly inconsistent with the supreme principle of all duty. ~ Immanuel Kant

If I cannot give consent to my own death, whose body is this? Who owns my life? ~ Sue Rodriguez

The statistics of suicide show that, for non-combatants at least, life is more interesting in war than in peace. ~ William Ralph Inge

In a way, Amelia Kindl had been right when she once said to me, 'I saved your life.' She was right, but not in the way she meant. When she saw the suicide note on Elise Dembowski's Super-Secret Diary and called my father, she set into motion the chain of events that led me to being in the DJ booth tonight. And that, in a way, had saved my life. ~ Leila Sales

When the bell rings, and lunch is over, I decide to come back here tomorrow, and the next day. I tell myself it really isn't that bad. ~ Nina LaCour

you look you see only bitterness or despair. If all of these conditions and situations apply to you, I recommend a refreshing suicide attempt. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

Terror is glamour - not only, but also. I am firmly convinced that there's something like a fascination with death among suicide bombers. ~ Salman Rushdie

Nonviolent coercion always brings tension to the surface. This tension, however, must not be seen as destructive. There is a kind of tension that is both healthy and necessary for growth. Society needs nonviolent gadflies to bring its tensions into the open and force its citizens to confront the ugliness of their prejudices and the tragedy of their racism.

It is important for the liberal to see that the oppressed person who agitates for his rights is not the creator of tension....How strange it would be to condemn a physician who, through persistent work and the ingenuity of his medical skills, discovered cancer in a patient. Would anyone be so ignorant as to say he caused the cancer? Through the skills and discipline of direct action we reveal that there is a dangerous cancer of hatred and racism in our society. We did not cause the cancer; we merely exposed it. Only through this kind of exposure will the cancer be cured. ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

My friends, my children, and fellow sufferers, when I reflect on the
distribution of good and evil here below, I find that much has been
given man to enjoy, yet still more to suffer. Though we should examine
the whole world, we shall not find one man so happy as to have nothing
left to wish for; but we daily see thousands who by suicide shew us they
have nothing left to hope. In this life then it appears that we cannot
be entirely blest; but yet we may be completely miserable! ~ Oliver Goldsmith

A physician is nothing but a consoler of the mind. ~ Petronius

Glenn died at the perfect moment, I thought, but Wertheimer didn't commit suicide at the perfect moment, whoever commits suicide never commits suicide at the perfect moment, whereas a so-called natural death always occurs at the perfect moment. Wertheimer ~ Thomas Bernhard

He were found drowned. He were coming home very hopeless o' aught on earth. He thought God could na be harder than men; mappen not so hard; mappen as tender as a mother; mappen tenderer. I'm not saying he did right, and I'm not saying he didn't wrong. All I say is, may neither me nor mine ever have his sore heart, or we may do like things. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

The foolish rush to end their lives.
Only the steadfast soul survives. ~ Christine De Pizan

Non-violence ... is the only thing that the atom bomb cannot destroy. I did not move a muscle when I first heard that the atom bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. On the contrary, I said to myself, Unless now the world adopts non-violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind. ~ Mahatma Gandhi