Death with Dignity Quotes

It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share. It is time to go.

If we are to be the last of the White men who conquered the world; if we are finally to be overwhelmed by a pack of rats, let us at least face the death of our race as our ancestors faced their death---like MEN.

He had never looked forward to the wisdom and other vaunted benefits of old age. Would he be able to die young—and if possible free of all pain? A graceful death—as a richly patterned kimono, thrown carelessly across a polished table, slides unobtrusively down into the darkness of the floor beneath. A death marked by elegance.

I believe it should be possible for someone stricken with a serious and ultimately fatal illness to choose to die peacefully with medical help, rather than suffer.

I know that there are people who believe that if they get to the stage where life is absolutely intolerable because of pain and indignity... they would like to end their life before nature intended, and we think they should have the choice to do so.

Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death.

In working with those who are dying, I offer another human being a spacious environment with my mind in which they can die as they need to die. I have no right to define how another person should die. I'm just there to help them transition, however they need to do it.

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

In the event that my illness worsens, I want to have a guarantee that I can die in a dignified manner. Nowhere in the bible does it say that a person has to stick it out to the decreed end. No one tells us what "decreed" means.

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

Incurably sick persons should be granted mercy death.

I think a lot of us share a fear that we and people we love will lose control of our own destinies at the end of life.

Of all the arguments against voluntary euthanasia, the most influential is the 'slippery slope': once we allow doctors to kill patients, we will not be able to limit the killing to those who want to die.

If he is convicted, Dr. Kevorkian says he will die a martyr's death by going on a hunger strike.

I have not often seen much dignity in the process by which we die.

There can be no stronger claim to a physician's assistance than at the time when death is imminent, a moral judgment implied by the state's own recognition of the legitimacy of medical procedures necessarily hastening the moment of impending death.

I think it's ridiculous and appalling that people have to go abroad to end their life instead of being able to end their life at home.

Seppuku is Japanese for ritual suicide. I thought, What a cute name for a coat.

For some folks death is release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.

Far from definitively resolving the assisted suicide issue, the court's decisions seem to assure that the debate over assisted suicide and euthanasia is not yet over - and may have only begun.

I said to myself, 'I want to die decently'.

Nineteen percent of doctors say that they'd be able to give their patients a lethal injection. But they also went on to say that the patient would have to be really, really behind on payments.

People want the right to die at a time of their own choosing. Too many families have watched helplessly as a relative dies slowly, longing for death.

These end of life decisions are so difficult and so personal that government ought to stay out of it.

My intent was to carry out my duty as a doctor, to end their suffering. Unfortunately, that entailed, in their cases, ending of the life.