A Quote by Octavio Paz

If society abolishes poetry it commits spiritual suicide.

Octavio Paz

Quote Topics

Poetry Society Spiritual Suicide

Quote Author

Octavio Paz
Mexican - Poet
March 31, 1914 - April 19, 1998

Every seventeen minutes in America, someone commits suicide. Mostly, I have been impressed by how little value our society puts on saving the lives of those who are in such despair as to want to end them. It is a societal illusion that suicide is rare. It is not.

Kay Redfield Jamison

The wife who submits to sexual intercourse against her wishes or desires, virtually commits suicide; while the husband who compels it, commits murder.

Victoria Woodhull

There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, , etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.

Karl Marx

Any nation or government that deprives an individual of freedom is in that moment committing an act of moral and spiritual murder. Any individual who is not concerned about his freedom commits an act of moral and spiritual suicide.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

Thomas Huxley

No one commits suicide because they want to die.

Tiffanie DeBartolo

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.

W. H. Auden

Trickery succeeds sometimes, but it always commits suicide.

Khalil Gibran

The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Poetry is the way into a spiritual vision of society and the universe.

Camille Paglia

When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels.

Edward Dahlberg

I have examined the death penalty under each of its two aspects: as a direct action, and as an indirect one. What does it come down to? Nothing but something horrible and useless, nothing but a way of shedding blood that is called a crime when an individual commits it, but is sadly called "justice" when society brings it about. Make no mistake, you lawmakers and judges, in the eyes of God as in those of conscience, what is a crime when individuals do it is no less an offense when society commits the deed.

Victor Hugo

For many centuries, suicides were treated like criminals by the society. That is part of the terrible legacy that has come down into society's method of handling suicide recovery. Now we have to fight off the demons that have been hanging around suicide for centuries.