“
I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I'm not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like "I'm shit and the world'd be better off without poor me" type that says that but also imagines what everybody'll say at their funeral. I've met types like that on wards. Poor-me-I-hate-me-punish-me-come-to-my-funeral. Then they show you a 20 X 25 glossy of their dead cat. It's all self-pity bullshit. It's bullshit. I didn't have any special grudges. I didn't fail an exam or get dumped by anybody. All these types. Hurt themselves. I didn't want to especially hurt myself. Or like punish. I don't hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn't want to play anymore is all. I wanted to just stop being conscious. I'm a whole different type. I wanted to stop feeling this way. If I could have just put myself in a really long coma I would have done that. Or given myself shock I would have done that. Instead.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
“
I do not use “microaggression” anymore. I detest the post-racial platform that supported its sudden popularity. I detest its component parts—“micro” and “aggression.” A persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor. I use the term “abuse” because aggression is not as exacting a term. Abuse accurately describes the action and its effects on people: distress, anger, worry, depression, anxiety, pain, fatigue, and suicide.
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials))
“
I personally don't think about jumping because things can't possibly get worse... To the contrary, I contemplate it because I believe things probably will.
”
”
Tyler Knight (Burn My Shadow: A Selective Memory of an X-Rated Life)
“
Lux’s frequent forged excuses from phys. ed. She always used the same method, faking the rigid t’s and b’s of her mother’s signature and then, to distinguish her own handwriting, penning her signature, Lux Lisbon, below, the two beseeching L’s reaching out for each other over the ditch of the u and barbed-wire x.
”
”
Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides)
“
Fuck you motherfucker
I hate to watch you try
Fuck you motherfucker
Why don't you fucking die?
If I woke up as you
I'd gas myself and fry
But you don't have the guts
To even watch my suicide
”
”
Leo X. Robertson (Jesus of Scumburg)
“
What makes a person—one who is so deeply loved—decide to do such a thing?
”
”
Emily X.R. Pan
“
Since September,
I sat one seat behind Anna in algebra.
Passed papers to her every day.
Studied for tons of tests together.
Though it often seemed impossible,
Eventually,
We always found the unknown for X.
But not this time.
This equation
Bounces against my brain.
And sneers at all attempted answers.
I know I'll re-examine the variables,
And reanalyze the unknowns, maybe forever.
But
It won't matter.
Because, Anna-
I know I'll never figure out Y.
Y you didn't want to live-
And Y I never noticed.
”
”
Terri Fields (After the Death of Anna Gonzales)
“
Once on yellow sheet of paper with green lines, he wrote a poem
and he called it “Spot”
because that was the name of his dog and that’s what it was all about
and his teacher gave him an “A” and a big gold star
and his mother hung it on the kitchen cupboard and showed it to his aunt
and that was the year his sister was born-and his parents kissed all the time
and the little girl around the corner sent him a postcard with a row of X’s on it
and his father tucked him into bed at night and was always there.
Then on a white sheet of paper with blue lines, he wrote another poem
and he called it “Autumn”
because that was the time of year and that’s what it was all about
and his teacher gave him an “A” and told him to write more clearly
and his mother told him not to hang it on the kitchen cupboard because it left marks
and that was the year his sister got glasses and his parents never kissed anymore
and the little girl around the corner laughed when he fell down with his bike
and his father didn’t tuck him in at night.
So, on another piece of paper torn from a notebook he wrote another poem
and he called it “Absolutely Nothing”
Because that’s what it was all about
and his teach gave him an “A” and a hard searching look
and he didn’t show it to his mother
and that was the year he caught his sister necking on the back porch
and the little girl around the corner wore too much make-up so that he laughed when he kissed her
but he kissed her anyway
and he tucked himself in bed at three AM with his father snoring loudly in the next room
Finally, on the inside of a matchbook he wrote another poem
and he called it “?” because that’s what it was all about
And he gave himself an “A” and a slash on each wrist and hung it on the bathroom mirror
Because he couldn’t make it to the kitchen.
”
”
Earl Reum
“
While dragging herself up she had to hang onto the rail. Her twisted progress was that of a cripple. Once on the open deck she felt the solid impact of the black night, and the mobility of the accidental home she was about to leave.
Although Lucette had never died before—no, dived before, Violet—from such a height, in such a disorder of shadows and snaking reflections, she went with hardly a splash through the wave that humped to welcome her. That perfect end was spoiled by her instinctively surfacing in an immediate sweep — instead of surrendering under water to her drugged lassitude as she had planned to do on her last night ashore if it ever did come to this. The silly girl had not rehearsed the technique of suicide as, say, free-fall parachutists do every day in the element of another chapter.
Owing to the tumultuous swell and her not being sure which way to peer through the spray and the darkness and her own tentaclinging hair—t,a,c,l—she could not make out the lights of the liner, an easily imagined many-eyed bulk mightily receding in heartless triumph. Now I’ve lost my next note.
Got it.
The sky was also heartless and dark, and her body, her head,and particularly those damned thirsty trousers, felt clogged with Oceanus Nox, n,o,x. At every slap and splash of cold wild salt, she heaved with anise-flavored nausea and there was an increasing number, okay, or numbness, in her neck and arms. As she began losing track of herself, she thought it proper to inform a series of receding Lucettes—telling them to pass it on and on in a trick-crystal regression—that what death amounted to was only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude.
She did not see her whole life flash before her as we all were afraid she might have done; the red rubber of a favorite doll remained safely decomposed among the myosotes of an un-analyzable brook; but she did see a few odds and ends as she swam like a dilettante Tobakoff in a circle of brief panic and merciful torpor. She saw a pair of new vairfurred bedroom slippers, which Brigitte had forgotten to pack; she saw Van wiping his mouth before answering, and then, still withholding the answer, throwing his napkin on the table as they both got up; and she saw a girl with long black hair quickly bend in passing to clap her hands over a dackel in a half-tom wreath.
A brilliantly illumined motorboat was launched from the not-too-distant ship with Van and the swimming coach and the oilskin-hooded Toby among the would-be saviors; but by that time a lot of sea had rolled by and Lucette was too tired to wait. Then the night was filled with the rattle of an old but still strong helicopter. Its diligent beam could spot only the dark head of Van, who, having been propelled out of the boat when it shied from its own sudden shadow, kept bobbing and bawling the drowned girl’s name in the black, foam-veined, complicated waters.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle)
“
Our world is suffering from metastatic cancer. Stage 4. Racism has spread to nearly every part of the body politic, intersecting with bigotry of all kinds, justifying all kinds of inequities by victim blaming; heightening exploitation and misplaced hate; spurring mass shootings, arms races, and demagogues who polarize nations, shutting down essential organs of democracy; and threatening the life of human society with nuclear war and climate change. In the United States, the metastatic cancer has been spreading, contracting, and threatening to kill the American body as it nearly did before its birth, as it nearly did during its Civil War. But how many people stare inside the body of their nations' racial inequities, their neighborhoods' racial inequities, their occupations' racial inequities, their institutions' racial inequities, and flatly deny that their policies are racist? They flatly deny that racial inequity is a signpost of racist policy. They flatly deny the racist policy as they use racist ideas to justify the racial inequity. They flatly deny the cancer of racism as the cancer cells spread and literally threaten their own lives and the lives of the people and spaces and places they hold dear. The popular conception of denial--like the popular strategy of suasion--is suicidal.
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist)
“
I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever
the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke
inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. . . .
My homemade education gave me, with every additional book
I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness,
and blindness that was affecting the black race in America. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
”
”
Huey P. Newton (Revolutionary Suicide)
“
I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I’m not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like “I’m shit and the world’d be better off without poor me” type that says that but also imagines what everybody’ll say at their funeral. I’ve met types like that on wards. Poor-me-I-hate-me-punish-me-come-to-my-funeral. Then they show you a 20 x 25 glossy of their dead cat. It’s all self-pity bullshit. It’s bullshit. I didn’t have any special grudges. I didn’t fail an exam or get dumped by anybody. All these types. Hurt themselves.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
“
The source of racist ideas was not ignorance and hate, but self-interest. The history of racist ideas is the history of powerful policymakers erecting racist policies out of self-interest, then producing racist ideas to defend and rationalize the inequitable effects of their policies, while everyday people consume those racist ideas, which in turn sparks ignorance and hate. Treating ignorance and hate and expecting racism to shrink suddenly seemed like treating a cancer patient’s symptoms and expecting the tumors to shrink. The body politic might feel better momentarily from the treatment—from trying to eradicate hate and ignorance—but as long as the underlying cause remains, the tumors grow, the symptoms return, and inequities spread like cancer cells, threatening the life of the body politic. Educational and moral suasion is not only a failed strategy. It is a suicidal strategy.
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials))
“
The word “racism” went out of fashion in the liberal haze of racial progress—Obama’s political brand—and conservatives started to treat racism as the equivalent to the N-word, a vicious pejorative rather than a descriptive term. With the word itself becoming radioactive to some, passé to others, some well-meaning Americans started consciously and perhaps unconsciously looking for other terms to identify racism. “Microaggression” became part of a whole vocabulary of old and new words—like “cultural wars” and “stereotype” and “implicit bias” and “economic anxiety” and “tribalism”—that made it easier to talk about or around the R-word. I do not use “microaggression” anymore. I detest the post-racial platform that supported its sudden popularity. I detest its component parts—“micro” and “aggression.” A persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor. I use the term “abuse” because aggression is not as exacting a term. Abuse accurately describes the action and its effects on people: distress, anger, worry, depression, anxiety, pain, fatigue, and suicide.
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials))
“
I want a partnership, with someone as strong as me. Not someone who sees me as competition or a threat to them because I earn more than them. I want someone who won’t expect me to do the hoovering or cook dinner just because I happen to have two X chromosomes, which is why I also don’t intend to have kids, I’d be the one that would have to take a ‘career break’ – AKA professional suicide.
”
”
Cassie Connor (Love Under Contract)
“
The X chromosome does most of the heavy developmental lifting, while the little Y has been shedding its associated genes at a rate of about five every one million years, committing suicide in slow motion. It’s now down to less than 100 genes. By comparison, the X chromosome carries about 1,500 genes, all necessary participants in embryonic construction projects. These are not showing any signs of decay.
”
”
John Medina (Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School)
“
The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities—he is only reacting to four hundred years of the conscious racism of the American whites. But as racism leads America up the suicide path, I do believe, from the experiences that I have had with them, that the whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the wall and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth—the only way left to America to ward off the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to.
”
”
Malcolm X (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
“
It pisses me off when people tell me things like ‘it can’t be that bad,’ ‘It’s not the end of the world,’ and ‘think positively.’ It’s not that simple! I don’t think people who are uneducated about depression realize how crap it is to wake up angry or disappointed to be alive. Where there is nothing that makes you excited to get out of bed, your dopamine’s in the gutter and your anhedonia is boss. To battle with suicidal thoughts throughout the night. To slowly and painfully lose everything that gives you the x-factor. A place where food is disgusting and pleasure almost non-existent. Some days it genuinely feels like the end of the world, and trust me, it’s horrifying. It has been equally horrifying for those around me.
”
”
K.J. Redelinghuys (Unfiltered: Grappling with Mental Illness)
“
Moreover, although reference works existed on library shelves in available, and redundant, profusion, no direct access could be obtained to the banned, or burned, books of the three cosmologists, Xertigny, Yates and Zotov (pen names), who had recklessly started the whole business half a century earlier, causing, and endorsing, panic, demency and execrable romanchiks. All three scientists had vanished now: X had committed suicide; Y had been kidnapped by a laundryman and transported to Tartary; and Z, a ruddy, white-whiskered old sport, was driving his Yakima jailers crazy by means of incomprehensible crepitations, ceaseless invention of invisible inks, chameleonizations, nerve signals, spirals of out-going lights and feats of ventriloquism that imitated pistol shots and sirens.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle)
“
The accomplishment of the testimony was two-fold: It changed the death of Marshall from suicide to death by gunshot, and it brought into light bespectacled Johnson hit man, Malcolm “Mac” Wallace. At one point, Wallace, a former marine who had been the president of the University of Texas student body, had strong political aspirations. In 1946, Wallace was an organizer for Homer Rainey’s campaign for governor.44 Wallace eventually became indebted to Johnson, and the closest he would ever get to political office would be in administering of carnage for Johnson and his Texas business associates. Wallace was the Mr. X at the gas station asking Nolan Griffin for directions. Described as a “hatchet man”45 for Johnson by Lyndon’s mistress Madeleine Brown, Wallace was an important link in many of the murders connected to Johnson. Estes’s lawyer, Douglas Caddy, revealed Wallace’s and Johnson’s complicity in Texas-style justice in a letter to Stephan S. Trott at the US Department of Justice: My client, Mr. Estes, has authorized me to make this reply to your letter of May 29, 1984. Mr. Estes was a member of a four-member group, headed by Lyndon Johnson, which committed criminal acts in Texas in the 1960’s. The other two, besides Mr. Estes and LBJ, were Cliff Carter and Mack Wallace. Mr. Estes is willing to disclose his knowledge concerning the following criminal offenses: Murders 1. The killing of Henry Marshall 2. The killing of George Krutilek 3. The killing of Ike Rogers and his secretary 4. The killing of Coleman Wade 5. The killing of Josefa Johnson 6. The killing of John Kinser 7. The killing of President J. F. Kennedy46
”
”
Roger Stone (The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ)
“
Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Chops” because that was the name of his dog And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and a gold star And his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his aunts That was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zoo And he let them sing on the bus And his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hair And his mother and father kissed a lot And the girl around the corner sent him a Valentine signed with a row of X’s and he had to ask his father what the X’s meant And his father always tucked him in bed at night And was always there to do it Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poem And he called it “Autumn” because that was the name of the season And that’s what it was all about And his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearly And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paint And the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigars And left butts on the pews And sometimes they would burn holes That was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black frames And the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa Claus And the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lot And his father never tucked him in bed at night And his father got mad when he cried for him to do it. Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poem And he called it “Innocence: A Question” because that was the question about his girl And that’s what it was all about And his professor gave him an A and a strange steady look And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed her That was the year that Father Tracy died And he forgot how the end of the Apostle’s Creed went And he caught his sister making out on the back porch And his mother and father never kissed or even talked And the girl around the corner wore too much makeup That made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to do And at three A.M. he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundly That’s why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poem And he called it “Absolutely Nothing” Because that’s what it was really all about And he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wrist And he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn’t think he could reach the kitchen. That was the poem I read for Patrick. Nobody knew who wrote it, but Bob said he heard it before, and he heard that it was some kid’s suicide note. I really hope it wasn’t because then I don’t know if I like the ending.
”
”
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
“
Dulles knew of Jung through his wife, who had an interest in psychoanalysis and had trained as an analyst in Zürich before the war. He also knew of the reports of Jung’s Nazi fellow traveling. He had these checked and found they were unsubstantiated. Eventually Dulles and Jung met and began an “experimental marriage between espionage and psychology” involving the “psychological profile” of political and military leaders. Dulles was so impressed by Jung’s insights that he urged his OSS chiefs to pay great attention to his analyses, especially of Hitler, who Jung had cautioned wouldn’t shy from suicide if things got desperate. By this time, Hitler was living in an underground bunker in East Prussia, and required anyone wanting an interview to be disarmed and X-rayed. This is how Jung became “Agent 488,” his code name in Dulles’ OSS reports. Dulles was convinced that Jung’s assessments of Nazi and Fascist leaders “showed a deep antipathy to what Nazism and Fascism stood for,” and in later life, Dulles remarked that “Nobody will probably ever know how much Professor Jung contributed to the Allied cause during the war.” When asked for details, Dulles demurred, saying the information was “highly classified for the indefinite future,” which meant that Jung’s “services would have to remain undocumented.
”
”
Gary Lachman (Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung's Life & Teachings)
“
Despite the many troubling facts exposed by “Dark Alliance,” the media campaign against the story effectively ended Webb’s career as a journalist. He resigned from The Mercury News in November 1997 and never again worked in a newsroom. In the years following, Webb worked as an investigator for the California State Legislature and published the occasional story as a freelancer. He was laid off from his job in 2004 and shortly after was found dead in his home with two gunshot wounds to the head. Coroners ruled Webb’s death a suicide, to the continued disbelief of many.
”
”
Donovan X. Ramsey (When Crack Was King: A People's History of a Misunderstood Era)
“
The happiest years are the shortest. We only notice them after they're gone," X wrote in The Reason I'm Lost. "Therefore, the attempt to avoid suffering is the most suicidal impulse of all. It is to ask your life to go by so quickly that you never see a moment of it.
”
”
Catherine Lacey (Biography of X)
“
I do not use “microaggression” anymore. I detest the post-racial platform that supported its sudden popularity. I detest its component parts—“micro” and “aggression.” A persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor. I use the term “abuse” because aggression is not as exacting a term. Abuse accurately describes the action and its effects on people: distress, anger, worry, depression, anxiety, pain, fatigue, and suicide. What other people call racial microaggressions I call racist abuse. And I call the zero-tolerance policies holding these abusers accountable what they are: antiracist. To be racist is to shy away from the R-word, steeped in denial.
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials))
“
To peruse Larry Flynt's flagship is to encounter laughable facets of necrophilia, dildo-strapped nuns, ambulatory turds, walking anuses, the perceived discrepancy in penis size between black and white males, vaginas large enough to envelop an entire man, physical intimacies with anthropomorphic pets, lesbian love rituals, the ills and quirks of male homosexuality, the corrosive effect of vaginal discharge upon automobile upholstery, the danger that freshly licked African-american lips will accidentally adhere to some glasslike surface, bar sluts, gang-bangs, wastebasket fetuses, flatulence anal and vaginal, the handicapped, Ku Klux Klansmen, lynching, anal sex, prison romance, naked females whose faces are covered by paper bags, sex crimes of the rich and famous, sex in full-body traction, retards as playthings, practical jokes committed by Saint Peter, suicide, consanguinity, animal husbandry in the connubial sense, erectile dysfunction, voyeurs, panty-sniffewrs, menstruation, STDs and philosopher houseflies delivering piquant sophistries while nibbling on corn-studded nuggets of shit.
”
”
Allan MacDonell (Prisoner of X: 20 Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine)
“
That same year Cobain committed suicide, and Gen X lost its greatest talisman. Cobain’s death blurred the lines between art and reality in a very uncomfortable way—suddenly all the references to guns and self-loathing seemed like thinly veiled cries for help from an individual in distress rather than profound artistic statements.
”
”
Kevin Craft (Grunge, Nerds, and Gastropubs: A Mass Culture Odyssey (Kindle Single))
“
Living with other people. in a city, a suburb, or a village, requires courage, trust, or forgetfulness. We know (though we forget) that as Hobbes famously observed, anyone can kill anyone else. We know (though we trust this it will not happen here) that one person can shoot x in a school, or x on a military base, or x in a shopping center parking lot. We know that, but we forget it. We forget because we trust our neighbors, or, more often, because we accept the risk of living how and where we do: because we want the things that other people bring us. We forget it because if we are to have democratic politics, we must have courage, and courage requires us to forget our fears.
The terrorist preys on our fear, but not only on the simple fear of death. The suicide bomber reminds us that we are always a mystery to one another. the suicide bomber holds the terror and the promise that the world could be blown asunder in a moment, and that this could be the work of one alone. The terrorist is the dark side of individualism. We fear terror because we know that power always lies within our reach.
”
”
Anne Norton (On the Muslim Question)
“
We knew that members of the second expedition to Area X had committed suicide by gunshot and members of the third had shot each other.
”
”
Jeff VanderMeer (Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1))
“
Microaggression” became part of a whole vocabulary of old and new words—like “cultural wars” and “stereotype” and “implicit bias” and “economic anxiety” and “tribalism”—that made it easier to talk about or around the R-word. I do not use “microaggression” anymore. I detest the post-racial platform that supported its sudden popularity. I detest its component parts—“micro” and “aggression.” A persistent daily low hum of racist abuse is not minor. I use the term “abuse” because aggression is not as exacting a term. Abuse accurately describes the action and its effects on people: distress, anger, worry, depression, anxiety, pain, fatigue, and suicide. What other people call racial microaggressions I call racist abuse. And I call the zero-tolerance policies preventing and punishing these abusers what they are: antiracist. Only racists shy away from the R-word—racism is steeped in denial.
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials))
“
It must be a kind of suicide to love a person like this, a person so edgeless. It must be like drowning.
”
”
Catherine Lacey (Biography of X)
“
Malcolm X proposes for Blacks themselves to bring to an end their deracination with a gesture of symbolic suicide, the passage through zero-point, in order to free the space for a new identity.
”
”
Slavoj Žižek (Freedom: A Disease Without Cure)
“
The history of racist ideas is the history of powerful policymakers erecting racist policies out of self-interest, then producing racist ideas to defend and rationalize the inequitable effects of their policies, while everyday people consume those racist ideas, which in turn sparks ignorance and hate. Treating ignorance and hate and expecting racism to shrink suddenly seemed like treating a cancer patient’s symptoms and expecting the tumors to shrink. The body politic might feel better momentarily from the treatment—from trying to eradicate hate and ignorance—but as long as the underlying cause remains, the tumors grow, the symptoms return, and inequities spread like cancer cells, threatening the life of the body politic. Educational and moral suasion is not only a failed strategy. It is a suicidal strategy.
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials))
“
I remember my dad told me a story about a gifted composer. That story has haunted me ever since. At the age of 23, the young man wrote his first and last symphony. He knew it was a masterpiece. Nothing else he ever did would be as good. When he finished the final note, he got up from his seat. He looked in a mirror. He was a muscular, fit young man, very handsome. He took a razor and slit his throat. My dad said he couldn’t listen to that music without crying. In the Lazar House, Danny and I found ConX. At last we understood . When the supreme moment of your life has come, why go on? ConX is perfection. It delivers your once-in-a-lifetime moment – your death. Lacrimae rerum.
”
”
Adam Jefferson (The Jesus Drug: The Miracle Pill)
“
The history of racist ideas is the history of powerful policymakers erecting racist policies out of self-interest, then producing racist ideas to defend and rationalize the inequitable effects of their policies, while everyday people consume those ideas, which in turn sparks ignorance and hate. Treating ignorance and hate and expecting racism to shrink suddenly seemed like treating a cancer patient's symptoms and expecting the tumors to shrink. The body politic might feel better momentarily from the treatment-from trying to eradicate hate and ignorance- but as long as the underlying cause remains, the tumors grow, the symptoms return, and inequities spread like cancer cells, threatening the life of the body politic. Educational and moral suasion is not only a failed strategy. It is a suicidal strategy.
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi
“
According to news reports, members of the sect believed in an assortment of pseudoreligious and paranormal ideas, including resurrection (obviously), astrology, and psychic powers. They were also avid watchers of paranormal shows on TV. This of course does not imply that watching The X-Files leads to suicide, just like millions of people playing Grand Theft Auto video games are not automatically turned into criminals on a rampage.
”
”
Massimo Pigliucci (Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk)
“
The history of racist ideas is the history of powerful policymakers erecting racist policies out of self-interest, then producing racist ideas to defend and rationalize the inequitable effects of their policies, while everyday people consume those racist ideas, which in turn sparks ignorance and hate. Treating ignorance and hate and expecting racism to shrink suddenly seemed like treating a cancer patient’s symptoms and expecting the tumors to shrink. The body politic might feel better momentarily from the treatment—from trying to eradicate hate and ignorance—but as long as the underlying cause remains, the tumors grow, the symptoms return, and inequities spread like cancer cells, threatening the life of the body politic. Educational and moral suasion is not only a failed strategy. It is a suicidal strategy. —
”
”
Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist (One World Essentials))
“
Therefore, the attempt to avoid suffering is the most suicidal impulse of all. It is to ask your life to go by so quickly that you never see a moment of it.Ӡ
”
”
Catherine Lacey (Biography of X)