"Ölümün bilinmeyenine doğru çekip gitmeyi tercih eden kişi, kuramlara, ideolojilere, inançlara, tasarılara, yöneticilerin vaatlerine hiç inanmadığını gösterir. Yöneticilere de ona deli süsü vermekten başka çare kalmaz, çünkü bu her tür sorumluluğu ortadan kaldırır: İntihar edenlerin, ama aynı zamanda ve belki de yaşayanların sorumluluğunu. En liberal sistemler bile intiharı kabul etmek ve bu konuda konuşma özgürlüğünü hoş görmek istemez. İntihar insanlığın belki de son büyük tabusudur.""Yaşamın...
Arthur Schopenhauer/On Suicide
To have a right or claim to something means simply to be able to do it, take it, or use it without thereby injuring anyone else. Simplex sigillum veri. It is clear from this how meaningless are many questions, for example whether we have the right to take our own life. But as regards the claims that others may have on us personally, these rest on the condition of our being alive and fall to the ground when that condition no longer applies. It is an extravagant demand that a man who no...
David Hume/On Suicide
8.What is the meaning then of that principle that a man who, tired
of life and hunted by pain and misery, bravely overcomes all the natural terrors of death and makes his escape from this cruel scene; that
such a man I say, has incurred the indignation of his Creator by
encroaching on the office of divine providence, and disturbing the
order of the universe? Shall we assert that the Almighty has reserved
to himself in any peculiar manner the disposal of the lives of men,
and has not submitted...
Simon Armitage/I Am Very Bothered
I am very bothered when I thinkof the bad things I have done in my life.Not least that time in the chemistry labwhen I held a pair of scissors by the bladesand played the handlesin the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner;then called your name, and handed them over.O the unrivalled stench of branded skinas you slipped your thumb and middle finger in,then couldn't shake off the two burning rings. Marked,the doctor said, for eternity.Don't believe me, please, if I saythat was just my butterfingered...
Simon Armitage/To Do List
Sharpen all pencils.
Check off-side rear tyre pressure.
Defrag hard-drive.
Consider life and times of Donald Campbell, CBE.
Shampoo billiard-room carpet.
Learn one new word per day.
Make circumnavigation of Coniston Water by foot, visit Coniston Cemetery to pay respects.
Achieve Grade 5 Piano by Easter.
Go to fancy dress party as Donald Campbell complete with crash helmet and life jacket.
Draft pro-forma apology letter during meditation session.
Check world-ranking.
Skim duckweed from...
Roald Dahl/Television
The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until...
Hannah Arendt/Eichmann In Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil
"And just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody
"Thou shalt not kill," even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be
murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody:
"Thou shalt kill," although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against
the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by
which most...