I don't crave publicity, you know.
— Jack Kevorkian
The law doesn't create a right.
What I think a doctor should do is prevent disease, by any means necessary.
Liberty means more to me than life itself.
I hate to say this, but I'll repeat it: After death, all we know that you do is stink.
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.
How can you regret helping a suffering patient?
We are all terminal.
I have no regrets, none whatsoever.
I'm not the kind of guy who has best friends.
I'm not radical.
If you don't have liberty and self-determination, you've got nothing, that's what this is what this country is built on. And this is the ultimate self-determination, when you determine how and when you're going to die when you're suffering.
When your conscience says law is immoral, don't follow it.
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.
It's the boredom that kills you. You read until you're tired of that. You do crossword puzzles until you're tired of that. This is torture. This is mental torture.
The American people are sheep. They're comfortable, rich, working. It's like the Romans, they're happy with bread and their spectator sports. The Super Bowl means more to them than any right.
There's no doubt I expect to die in prison.
The Jews were gassed. Armenians were killed in every conceivable way... So the Holocaust doesn't interest me, see? They've had a lot of publicity, but they didn't suffer as much.
Freedom has a price. Most people aren't willing to pay it.
Yes, we need euthanasia, for certain cases where people are in comas or too immobile to even press a button.
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.
If Christ can die in a barn, I think the death of a human in a van is not so bad.
Anytime you interfere with a natural process, you're playing God. God determines what happens naturally. That means when a person's ill, he shouldn't go to a doctor because he's asking for interference with God's will. But of course, patients can't think that way.
I think the Supreme Court does have the authority, which is not used, to declare a blanket right for all people, all adults.
I am not a sentimental person.
You've gotta know what death is to know life!
I can paint in jail.
I'm trying to knock the medical profession into accepting its responsibilities, and those responsibilities include assisting their patients with death.
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.
When history looks back, it will prove what I'll die knowing.
Five to six thousand people die every year waiting for organs, but nobody cares.
What are friends? Some people are nice. Some people aren't. There are some I'm fairly close with... we talk.
I didn't do this for other people; I did this for me. I fought for this right for me - does that sound selfish?
Rotten travesty. Yeah. Send me to jail for contempt. Try that. Go ahead.
I'm not lying to myself like most people.
I would not want to live with a tube in my neck and not be able to move a finger. I wouldn't - that to me is not life.
Many support what I am doing.
Fear controls you.
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.
The law is cruel.
I suppose, if helping a patient die is killing, I suppose I'm a killer.
The single worst moment of my life... was the moment I was born.
I'm not a romantic.
Everyone is going to die.
This could never be a crime in any society which deems himself enlightened.
If a man is terrified, it's up to me to dispel that terror.
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.
I'd find it demeaning to be cleaning toilets.
Look at the forces against me. They don't want me out. They're afraid I'll cause trouble if I get out.
All the big powers they've silenced me. So much for free speech and choice on this fundamental human right.
