Joseph A. Califano Jr. Quotes

I believe in the freedom of choice in both life and death.

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

It's my life and my death.

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

If you think of life and death on a continuum, finding the point where it tips is complicated. It cuts across all political lines and gets to the root of our humanity. It requires faith informed by years of intimacy that you're doing what's right for your loved one.

When does life start? When does it end? Who makes these decisions?... Every day, in hospitals and homes and hospices... people are struggling with those profound issues.

In a free society a large degree of human activity is none of the government's business. We should make criminal what's going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices.

I am politically pro-choice, but personally pro-life. I have my faith but refuse to force it on the world at large - especially this world, so brutal and unjust. I cannot make these wrenching personal life and death decisions for others - nor do I believe they should be made by a church run by childless men.

I don't think I should tell you what to do, nor should the government. As long as you enjoy your own personal liberties and don't infringe on the liberties of others, I don't care.

Every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity.

I don't much care whether rural Anatolians or Istanbul secularists take power. I'm not close to any of them. What I care about is respect for the individual.

The right to choose to live or to die is the most fundamental right there is; conversely, the duty to give others that opportunity to the best of our ability is the most fundamental duty there is.

A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation.

Finding a balance between hoped for cures and respect for life: That is the challenge.

The traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological, and demographic developments… it may be that only a rump of hard-core, know-nothing religious fundamentalist will defend the view that every human life, from conception to death, is sacrosanct.

What makes America unique in the world is the idea of the self-directed life.

The individual is greater than the state.

Euthanasia is a long, smooth-sounding word, and it conceals its danger as long smooth-sounding words do, but the danger is there, nevertheless..

Why is freedom such a hard sell? That's the question. In this country, why has the idea of individual liberty and responsibility become such a hard sell? That's something I never thought would happen here.

The problem with this world is that there isn't enough liberty and freedom.

If we are a free country, we have the right to be free.

Even if drugs are fully as destructive as they are usually claimed to be, it is morally wrong and demonstrably more destructive for government to deprive people of their unalienable, individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to make an utter mess of their own lives. Since human beings are inclined to learn more from the mistakes they make, rather than from their triumphs, the right to fail, for individuals and groups alike, may be even more important than the right to succeed, and it must be fiercely protected at almost any cost.

The only object of liberty is life.

Democracy is such a framework that everyone has the right to live their lives, fix their goals, their aims, their dreams and the ways to achieve them according to their own choice.

The most basic principle to being a free American is the notion that we as individuals are responsible for our own lives and decisions. We do not have the right to rob our neighbors to make up for our mistakes, neither does our neighbor have any right to tell us how to live, so long as we aren’t infringing on their rights. Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones. If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free.