Jack Kevorkian
Five to six thousand people die every year waiting for organs, but nobody cares.
There is nothing anyone can do anyway. The public has no power. The government knows I'm not a criminal. The parole board knows I'm not a criminal. The judge knows I'm not a criminal.
I gambled and I lost. I failed in securing my options for this choice for myself, but I succeeded in verifying the Dark Age is still with us.
When history looks back, it will prove what I'll die knowing.
If a man is terrified, it's up to me to dispel that terror.
I want some colleague to be free to come help me when I say the time has come. That's what I'm fighting for, me. Now that sounds selfish. And if it helps somebody else, so be it.
This could never be a crime in any society which deems himself enlightened.
I'm not radical.
Everyone is going to die.
I knew I was getting into one of the most illegal things in the world. It was the right thing to do.
I can paint in jail.
I have no regrets, none whatsoever.
I am not a sentimental person.
We are all terminal.
I suppose, if helping a patient die is killing, I suppose I'm a killer.
I think the Supreme Court does have the authority, which is not used, to declare a blanket right for all people, all adults.
How can you regret helping a suffering patient?
The law is cruel.
I have a natural right to do whatever I want with my body... as long as it doesn't affect anybody else or any other property.
Fear controls you.
I've seen schizophrenics who are so hopeless, you couldn't cheer them, and their lives are miserable and they end up as suicides. That's not right.
Liberty means more to me than life itself.
Many support what I am doing.
What I think a doctor should do is prevent disease, by any means necessary.
The law doesn't create a right.
I don't crave publicity, you know.
My aim in helping the patient was not to cause death. My aim was to end suffering. It's got to be decriminalized.Collection: Suffering
When you have nothing left to burn, you must set yourself on fire.Collection: Fire
The American Medical Association says the humane way is to let people starve and thirst to death. If you did that to an animal, youd be put in jail immediately ... In the face of such insanity masquerading as authority, who wouldnt be strident?Collection: Animal
I have a natural right to do whatever I want with my body as long as it doesn't affect anybody else or any other property.Collection: Long
Dying is not a crime.Collection: Dying
Well, let's take what people think is a dignified death. Christ - was that a dignified death? Do you think it's dignified to hang from wood with nails through your hands and feet bleeding, hang for three or four days slowly dying, with people jabbing spears into your side, and people jeering you? Do you think that's dignified? Not by a long shot. Had Christ died in my van with people around Him who loved Him, the way it was, it would be far more dignified. In my rusty van.Collection: Thinking
In quixotically trying to conquer death doctors all too frequently do no good for their patients' ease but at the same time they do harm instead by prolonging and even magnifying patients' dis-ease.Collection: Doctors
All the big powers... they've silenced me. So much for free speech and choice on this fundamental human right.Collection: Choices
Despite the solace of hypocritical religiosity and its seductive promise of an after-life of heavenly bliss, most of us will do anything to thwart the inevitable victory of biological death.Collection: Seductive
[Persons] who are recognized as citizens in any one state of the Union [have] the right to enter every other state, whenever they pleased... full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might meet; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.Collection: Political
There are certain things that words on paper can never make a crime, .. There are certain acts that by sheer common sense are not crimes.Collection: Common Sense
Everyone is going to die. Aren't you interested in what's going to happen?Collection: Dies
I got to dislike parties, like Jefferson and Madison. I think they're harmful. But the system is flawed so badly. I like what Plato said, long ago. Democracy is fit only for a small country. Can't survive in a large country.Collection: Country
The public can tolerate a Nazi America.Collection: America
I learned to smile by going through hell. Now I know what hell is and you don't. I can't tell you how it is, cause you can't do it with words.Collection: Causes
The public has no power. The government knows I'm not a criminal. The parole board knows I'm not a criminal. The judge knows I'm not a criminal.Collection: Government
I'm afraid of sudden death. I'd like to know I'm going to die. That's why death row wouldn't be so bad, although it's not pleasant. And cancer, inoperable, wouldn't be bad. That's not pleasant either. But to drop dead suddenly, it's hard on everybody else. My family, my relatives, my friends. It's just not a good way to go. I want to know I'm going to die.Collection: Cancer
The Supreme Court of the United States has validated the Nazi method of execution in concentration camps, starving them to death.Collection: Execution
I always said all my life, if I wasn't born and they gave me the question, I'd say, I don't want to be born.Collection: Want
We need some honesty and sincerity instead of corrupt government in Washington.Collection: Honesty