Jack Kevorkian Quotes

One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve.

It's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?

Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and help save the world.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'

I don't believe we're only motivated by our own self-interests. Often out of crisis comes this enormous wellspring of generosity and motivation.

The difference between sentiment and being sentimental is the following: Sentiment is when a driver swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a rabbit on the road. Being sentimental is when the same driver, when swerving away from the rabbit, hits a pedestrian.

Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the distressed.

It is selfish to concern oneself with tragedies.

For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act.

If I can help one person, why wouldn't I?

It is the true duty of every man to promote the happiness of his fellow creatures to the utmost of his power.

They charge me with fanaticism. If to be feelingly alive to the suffering of my fellow creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.

People are nicer than economists give us credit for. The economists cannot understand why people would work long and hard to clean up a community after a hurricane. … Most economists don’t have any interest in or understanding of psychology.

If I saw someone in need and I did nothing, I'd be defacing my own humanity.

I have the kind of conscience that it doesn't feel right if I watch other people suffer and I do nothing about it.

I'm not someone who seeks out stories of people who are suffering. I think they just kind of find me.

Writing about a person whose struggle you wish you could solve is an act of compassion and also, frankly, opportunism.

Inherently I think the goodness in most people, we get a warm sense of satisfaction if we help someone, it makes you feel better.

I don't do things to be rewarded. I help people because it's the right thing to do.

Good people do not let others suffer needlessly.

It is hideous and coarse to assume that we can do something for others-and it is vile not to endeavor to do it.

How can I act in an impersonal manner? When a man dies in the street for want of food, how can I ignore him? When I find a starving or naked man in the street, I cannot walk past him. I think no human being can do that.

I have always believed that the Good Samaritan went across the road to the wounded man just because he wanted to.