Some people might say, I have a right to die, when they are arguing the case for suicide. And while this is true, it is also true that the people on your planet need every bit of help and encouragement they can get from each person alive. In a certain sense, the energy of each individual does keep the world going, and to commit suicide is to refuse a basic, cooperative venture.

[Why is suicide held not to be right?] There is a doctrine uttered in secret that a man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door to his prison and run away; this is a great mystery which I do not understand. Yet I too, believe that the gods are our guardians, and that we are a possession of theirs. ...And if one of your possessions, an ox or an ass, for example took the liberty of putting himself out of the way when you had given no intimation of your wish that he should die, would you not be angry with him, and would you not punish him if you could? ...Then there may be reason in saying that a man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him, as he is now summoning me.

The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope.

Just as a man has the right to live, he ought also to have the right to die.

I thought that the only action a man could perform without shame was to take his life; that he had no right to diminish himself in the succession of days and the inertic of misery. No elect, I kept telling myself, but those who committed suicide.

The rights a man arrogates to himself are related to the duties he imposes on himself, to the tasks to which he feels equal. The great majority of men have no right to existence, but are a misfortune to higher men.

Just remember, it's not heroic to kill yourself, and it's a violation of God's Laws. ... The way it was explained to me in my tradition is... you are not your own property. You are God's property. ... You have no right to commit suicide, don't even think– it's not an option. See, like in America, everything is "choice". "It's your choice." It's NOT your choice. You have no choice, so don't even think about it. It's not your choice to make. Soon enough, God will come for you, okay? Leave it at that. And every time you have a suicidal ideation, just push it away, it's not you. It's the devil trying to put something inside your head. We live in such a sick society, that the demented people who run the mind games on our heads like you to believe that it's your choice whether to commit suicide or not. It's NOT your choice. It's immoral, and that's the end of it. You don't have to ponder everything like it's a choice. You have children, that's all you need to know. What would the world be like for them if you committed suicide, do you have any idea? <p>What you've gotta do is just get back on the road and keep walking, and don't stare at the chasm. That's all. You stand on the edge of a road, look down at the chasm and you'll get dizzy and fall in. So stop staring at the chasm. Get back on the road, and go back down to the meadow, and be with your family. And go on continue the struggle. That's all there is to it. That's your job. Your job is to struggle until you drop dead. That's it. Stop trying to be happy. The day you stop trying to be happy you might have a chance to live.

If a man has the right to self-ownership, to the control of his life, then in the real world he must also have the right to sustain his life by grappling with and transforming resources; he must be able to own the ground and the resources on which he stands and which he must use. In short, to sustain his "human right."

But let the individual man lay claim to ever so many rights because Man or the concept man ‘entitles’ him to them, because his being man does it: what do I care for his right and his claim? If he has his right only from Man and does not have it from me, then for me he has no right. His life, for example, counts to me only for what it is worth to me. I respect neither a so-called right of property (or his claim to tangible goods) nor yet his right to the ‘sanctuary of his inner nature’ (or his right to have the spiritual goods and divinities, his gods, remain un-aggrieved). His goods, the sensuous as well as the spiritual, are mine, and I dispose of them as proprietor, in the measure of my — might.

The only respect in which man is superior to animals is that he can die when he wants to, not just when he has to. Maybe it's the one freedom you can always count on — the freedom to throw your life away.

a. Does a Human Being Have the Right to Let Himself Be Put to Death for the Truth? by H.H.

There are only two kinds of arguments for euthanasia. The first is based on owning your life. Already in the last century, some philosophers and novelists began to talk of suicide as the ultimate act of self-control or self-possession. That is, of course, an illusion, for death is the surrender of all control or possession; and killing oneself is always an act of despair. It means a person has given up all hope. The second kind of argument is based on escaping from suffering. In actual fact, pain control is so far advanced now that suffering can be alleviated in almost all cases. The fear of suffering, however, creates a strong case for accepting a “right to die”. Right or no right, we will all die. The basic question, therefore, is always: since I must die, what is the meaning of life?

There is a certain right by which we many deprive a man of life, but none by which we may deprive him of death; this is mere cruelty.

But this we affirm, this we maintain, this we every way pronounce to be right, that no man ought to inflict on himself voluntary death, for this is to escape the ills of time by plunging into those of eternity; that no man ought to do so on account of another man's sins, for this were to escape a guilt which could not pollute him, by incurring great guilt of his own; that no man ought to do so on account of his own past sins, for he has all the more need of this life that these sins may be healed by repentance; that no man should put an end to this life to obtain that better life we look for after death, for those who die by their own hand have no better life after death.