100 Quotes on Suicide to Inspire Prevention
Suicide is a serious and complex issue that can have devastating effects on individuals, families, and communities. It is important to raise awareness about suicide and to understand the factors that can contribute to it.
According to the World Health Organization, suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15-29-year-olds. It is a global problem that affects people of all ages, genders, and backgrounds.
It’s never easy to talk about suicide, but it is essential to talk about it. By understanding what suicide is and how people get driven to commit this act, we could be able to understand it better and hopefully prevent it.
Let’s start with some of the most deeply insightful quotes about suicide out there.
“There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
Albert Camus
“Suicide is the punctuation mark at the end of many artistic careers.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
“It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way, one gets through many a bad night.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“No man kills himself unless there is something wrong with his life.”
A. Alvarez
“Nothing in my life has ever made me want to commit suicide more than people’s reaction to my trying to commit suicide.”
Emilie Autumn
“Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.”
Gore Vidal
“Early on, if I was alone two or three nights in a row, I’d start writing poems about suicide.”
Jack Nicholson
“Suicide is man’s way of telling God, ‘You can’t fire me – I quit.’”
Bill Maher
“No man ever threw away life while it was worth keeping.”
David Hume
“Jesus was a suicide if you ask me.”
Marsha Norman
“What else is there to do in college except drink beer or slit one’s wrists?”
Bret Easton Ellis
“If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”
Mahatma Gandhi
“The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever almost made me die.”
David Foster Wallace
“No one ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have tried while trying to write one.”
Robert Byrne
“Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”
Phil Donahue
“Yeah, because you’ll really be showing them, won’t you? Talk about cutting up your wrists to spite your fate.”
Alexander Gordon Smith
“Suicide does not end the chances of life getting worse; suicide eliminates the possibility of it ever getting better.”
Kat Calhoun
“Fear of heights is fear of a desire to jump.”
Amruta Patil
“So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it’s bad; it’s really simple.”
Damien Hirst
“The language of love letters is the same as suicide notes.”
Courtney Love
“Once you are married, there is nothing left for you, not even suicide.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
“What’s the big fucking deal—Lots of amazing people have committed suicide, and they turned out all right.”
Emilie Autumn
“Hope is a necessity for normal life and the major weapon against the suicide impulse.”
Karl A. Menninger
Death is easy. To live is the most painful thing I could imagine, and I’m weak and no longer willing to fight.”
Hannah Wright
Suicide is a serious thing. And if you know anyone who is suicidal, you need to get them help. No one should be in pain. Everyone should love themselves.”
Gerard Way
“He killed himself for wanting to live.”
Markus Zusak
“Never attempt to murder a man who is committing suicide.”
Woodrow Wilson
“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”
Arnold J. Toynbee
“Suicide seemed to me the greatest kind of freedom, a release from everything, from a life that had been ruined a long time ago.”
Natascha Kampusch
“She was what we used to call a suicide blonde – dyed by her own hand.”
Saul Bellow
“The joke of our time is the suicide of intention.”
Theodor W. Adorno
“It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.”
Franz Kafka
“Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of Suicide?”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“It wasn’t until ’94 when I tried to commit suicide that I realized that it wasn’t about the money.”
Vanilla Ice
“But in the end, one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
Albert Camus
“In the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology.”
Chuck Grassley
“We need to change the culture of this topic and make it OK to speak about mental health and suicide.”
Luke Richardson
Suicide is the role you write for yourself. You inhabit it, and you enact it. All carefully staged—where they will find you and how they will find you. But one performance only.”
Philip Roth
“No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.”
Cesare Pavese
“When you’re young and healthy, you can plan on Monday to commit suicide, and by Wednesday, you’re laughing again.”
Marilyn Monroe
“If you don’t do it my way, I suggest you commit suicide.”
Josef Albers
“He just wanted to see what a girl who was crazy enough to kill herself looked like.”
Sylvia Plath
“There is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.”
Daniel Webster
“When people kill themselves, they think they’re ending the pain, but all they’re doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.”
Jeannette Walls
“That’s the thing about suicide. Try as you might remember how a person lived his life, you always end up thinking about how he ended it.”
Anderson Cooper
“To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.”
Aristotle
“The counterpart of the suicide is the seeker, but the difference between them is slight.”
Paul Watzlawick
“Drunkenness is temporary suicide.”
Bertrand Russell
“I’m convinced that we can shape a different future for this country as it relates to mental health and as it relates to suicide.”
David Satcher
“The suicide arrives at the conclusion that what he is seeking does not exist; the seeker concludes that what he has not yet looked in the right place.”
Paul Watzlawick
“So easy to go sailing off this road. A wonder more folks didn’t. All that space, waiting.”
S. M. Hulse
“In most cases, suicide is a solitary event, and yet it often has far-reaching repercussions for many others. It is rather like throwing a stone into a pond; the ripples spread and spread.”
Alison Wertheimer
“Drunkenness is temporary suicide.”
Bertrand Russell
“If my Valentine you won’t be, I’ll hang myself on your Christmas tree.”
Ernest Hemingway
“We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices.”
Joan Didion
“To make yourself something less than you can be — that, too, is a form of suicide.”
Benjamin Lichtenberg
“Suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.”
Julie Burchill
“Suicide — the only offense against the Laws for which men cannot devise a punishment.”
Abraham Miller
“I’m the girl nobody knows until she commits suicide. Then suddenly everyone had a class with her.”
Tom Leveen
“Often it feels like I am breathing today only because a few years back I had no idea which nerve to cut…”
Sanhita Baruah
“I wonder if it will rain after we die. When you kill yourself, you don’t know what happens next, afterward.”
Albert Borris
“I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.”
Ezra Pound
“Perhaps the saddest irony of depression is that suicide happens when the patient gets a little better and can again function sufficiently.”
Dick Cavett
“The idea of suicide is of a very set narrative as if killing yourself is a definitive statement. But it can be just as meaningless as throwing a stone in a river.”
Denise Mina
“Suicide only really frightens those who are never tempted by it and never will be, for its darkness only welcomes those who are predestined to it.”
Georges Bernanos
“If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.”
Fran Lebowitz
“The great thing about suicide is that it’s not one of those things you have to do now, or you lose your chance. I mean, you can always do it later.”
Harvey Fierstein
“Life’s greatest gift is the freedom it leaves you to step out of it whenever you choose.”
André Breton
“Perhaps the saddest irony of depression is that suicide happens when the patient gets a little better and can again function sufficiently.”
Dick Cavett
“On average, since the urge to kill me, isn’t so strong that I actually kill myself, the world is worth living in.”
Tao Lin
“That’s the thing about suicide. Try as you might remember how a person lived his life, you always end up thinking about how he ended it.”
Anderson Cooper
“When one realizes that his life is worthless, he either commits suicide or travels.”
Edward Dahlberg
“When God desires to destroy a thing, he entrusts its destruction to the thing itself. Every bad institution of this world ends by suicide.”
Victor Hugo
“Women are constantly trying to commit suicide for love, but generally they take care not to succeed.”
W. Somerset Maugham
“Life is only a long and bitter suicide, and faith alone can transform this suicide into a sacrifice.”
Franz Liszt
“When one realizes that his life is worthless, he either commits suicide or travels.”
Edward Dahlberg
“Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy.”
Martin Heidegger
“He was so depressed, he tried to commit suicide by inhaling next to an Armenian.”
Woody Allen
“The only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage.”
Chuck Palahniuk
“There is something great and terrible about suicide.”
Honore de Balzac
“The world is full of friends of suicide victims thinking, ‘if I had only made that drive over there, I could have done something.’”
Darnell Lamont Walker
“Political courage is not political suicide.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Each victim of suicide gives his act a personal stamp which expresses his temperament, the special conditions in which he is involved, and which, consequently, cannot be explained by the social and general causes of the phenomenon.”
Emile Durkheim
“All healthy men have thought of their own suicide.”
Albert Camus
“Suicide is not a blot on anyone’s name; it is a tragedy.”
Kay Redfield Jamison
“No law can give or take away the choice to commit suicide.”
Maggie Gallagher
“Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.”
Thomas Huxley
Suicide doesn’t solve your problems. It only makes them infinitely, un-countably worse.”
Sinead O’Connor
“Gay teenagers are four times as likely to attempt suicide as straight ones. I wish they knew that there’s nothing wrong with them; that they are just a different shade of normal.”
Jodi Picoult
“Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. It’s literary suicide.”
Erma Bombeck
“Cutting, and suicide, two very different symptoms of the same problem, are gaining on us. I personally don’t know a single person who doesn’t know at least two of these victims personally.”
Pink
“The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.”
Sylvia Plath
“Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.”
David Levithan
“Hope is a necessity for normal life and the major weapon against the suicide impulse.”
Karl A. Menninger
“The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.”
Emil Cioran
“I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.”
David Levithan
“All my life, I have had the utmost admiration for suicides. I have always considered them superior to me in every way.”
Thomas Bernhard
“You don’t know what cold is until you’ve experienced the cold you feel when the blood is draining out of your body.”
Ry—Murakami
“I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won’t.”
Susanna Kaysen
Suicide Is a Multi-Layered Issue
There are many factors that can contribute to the risk of suicide. These can include mental health issues, such as depression or anxiety, as well as social, economic, and environmental factors. Substance abuse, trauma, and stress can also increase the risk of suicide.
Creating a Supportive Environment Can Help Prevent Suicide
It is important to create a supportive environment for those who may be at risk of suicide. This can include providing emotional support, listening without judgment, and offering help and guidance.
Warning Signs of Suicide
It is important to recognize the warning signs of suicide. These can include changes in behavior, such as withdrawal from social activities or a loss of interest in things they used to enjoy. Changes in mood, such as increased irritability or sadness, can also be warning signs. Other signs can include changes in sleep patterns, changes in appetite, and changes in personal hygiene.
Spotting the signs that your loved one is suicidal can be difficult, as many people who are struggling with thoughts of suicide may try to hide their feelings or may not know how to express what they are going through.
Your loved one may become increasingly irritable, sad, or anxious. They may also become more aggressive or irritable than usual, or they may start to experience mood swings.
In addition to changes in behavior and mood, there may also be changes in sleep patterns and appetite. Your loved one may start to sleep more or less than usual, or they may have difficulty falling or staying asleep. They may also start to eat more or less than usual, or they may lose interest in food altogether.
If you or someone you know is exhibiting warning signs of suicide, it is important to seek help. This can include talking to a mental health professional, a trusted family member or friend, or a counselor. In some cases, it may be necessary to seek emergency care.
If you notice any of these warning signs, it is important to take them seriously and to try to have a conversation with your loved one. Let them know that you are there for them and that you care about them. Encourage them to talk about their feelings and to seek help if they need it.
How to Deal with Suicidal Thoughts
If you are feeling suicidal, it’s important to remember that you are not alone and that there is help available. It can be difficult to ask for help, but reaching out to a trusted friend, family member, or mental health professional can make all the difference.
Here are some steps you can take if you are feeling suicidal:
- Talk to someone you trust. This could be a friend, family member, or even a coworker. Sometimes just talking about how you are feeling can help you feel better.
- Consider reaching out to a mental health professional. A therapist or counselor can provide you with support and guidance during this difficult time.
- Take care of yourself. Make sure you are eating well, getting enough sleep, and engaging in activities that you enjoy. Taking care of your physical health can improve your mental health as well.
- Avoid drugs and alcohol. These substances can worsen your mood and make it harder for you to think clearly.
- Seek support from others who are going through similar experiences. Joining a support group or online community can help you connect with others who understand what you are going through.
- Remember, it’s OK to ask for help. You don’t have to face your struggles alone. Reach out to someone you trust and take the first step towards getting the support you need.
Wrapping up
In conclusion, spotting the signs that someone is suicidal can be difficult, but it is important to be aware of the warning signs and to take them seriously.
By being there for your loved one and offering support and guidance, you can help to prevent a tragic outcome and provide them with the help and support they need.
If you are the one experiencing suicidal thoughts, please act immediately and ask for help so that you can ride out this storm with the help of others.
