Laurence Housman Quotes

Is it right for us, as a society, to do a thing – hang a man – which none of us individually would be prepared to do or even witness? The answer is 'no, not in a civilized society

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.

I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.

And this we should believe: that hope and volition can bring us closer to our ultimate goal: justice for all, injustice for no-one.

Society needs both justice and compassion, a head and a heart, if it is to be civilised.

You can't build a new society by violating the rights of others.

The man, who in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week.

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

Suicide to them is an act of selfishness. Someone who is truly selfless does not think of himself often enough to desire death.

Do they deserve to die?" but "Do we deserve to kill them?

Peace and freedom! These things shall be! How soon these things shall be - whether now or whether after great destruction and new beginnings and eons of time - is up to us!

I tell people, if you're thinking about suicide, all that stuff I've attempted and thought about it. If you think about it, life gets better. The key to life when it gets tough is to keep moving. Just keep moving.

The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide, not murder.

A humane and generous concern for every individual, his health and his fulfillment, will do more to soothe the savage heart than the fear of state-inflicted death, which chiefly serves to remind us how close we remain to the jungle.

Hatred of injustice is not the same thing as a love for everyday people.

If you are home, and you got no place to go, and you want to, just blow yourself up ... Go ahead ... The drugs themselves ... There's a price for doing stuff to yourself.

Suicides are timid murderers. Masochism instead of Sadism.

So many means of self-destruction, so little time.

It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.

The test of the moral quality of a civilization is its treatment of the weak and powerless.

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed. This throws a light on the nature of ethics, for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin. And when one investigates it it is like investigating mercury vapour in order to comprehend the nature of vapours.

There are issues of war and peace. And then, there are issues of life and death like this one that are no less morally compelling than war itself.

If somebody wants to shoot up and die in front of you, more power to them. The herd has a way of thinning itself out.

The God of life summons us to life; more, to be lifegivers, especially toward those who lie under the heel of the powers.