I think that everyone thought that the Depression like everything else, was for the white-folks, so it had nothing to do with them.

"When I was first aware that I had been laid low by the disease, I felt a need, among other things, to register a strong protest against the word "depression." Depression, most people know, used to be termed "melancholia," a word which appears in English as the year 1303 and crops up more than once in Chaucer, who in his usage seemed to be aware of its pathological nuances. "Melancholia" would still appear to be a far more apt and evocative word for the blacker forms of the disorder, but it was usurped by a noun with a blank tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness.

It may be that the scientist generally held responsible for its currency in modern times, a Johns Hopkins Medical School faculty member justly venerated — the Swiss-born psychiatrist Adolf Meyer — had a tin ear for the finer rhythms of English and therefore was unaware of the semantic damage he had inflicted for such a dreadful and raging disease. Nonetheless, for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control."

I say there're no depressed words just depressed minds.

He didn't understand depression. To him it was weakness.

They [Americans] are like little children, they don't believe anything they don't want to believe, like little children. They're trapped in the world of their own fantasies. Recently, I was re-reading old letters that I sent to my parents when I was studying in America. I wrote to my parents: "I have a feeling that [America] is not a country, but a kindergarten for mentally disabled children." Even at 15, I already understood that.

What is most curious is that humans of poorer classes are usually the ones who cultivate an unlimited adoration for their mother for having raised them with so many sacrifices. They suffer all kinds of misery, extreme poverty, disease, delinquency, discrimination, exclusion and torture, never realizing that it was their parents who put them in that situation for their own pleasure or due to irresponsible carelessness. And when the child commits some harmful act driven by the despair in which they were placed, people still sympathize with the "poor mother" for having a child that is "so ungrateful". All inherited misery magically becomes the child's responsibility! The same argumentative scheme which is applied here, is also applied in the theodicies: the impeccable Parent created their child out of love, gave them something very valuable, and also made them "free", while the child, being free, sinned, thus behaved wrongly and defiled this very valuable thing which was given to them, causing dissatisfaction for their unfortunate parent. It is an almost tragicomic scheme, because it seems to be exactly the opposite: our parents gave us, for their own pleasure and benefit, something of very dubious value which we, as a result of subjection and necessity – that is, very far from any real "freedom" – have to try to improve with a lot of our effort. As long as we do not reverse this prevailing valuation in our societies, ethical issues cannot even begin to be seriously considered, because the mother's viscerally egocentric and manipulative relationship with their children will continue to be regarded as a paradigm of ethical morality, which seems, at least, to be a crucial error of appreciation, a very serious mythology, a colossal mystification.

"And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation."

I learned as a child that despair is a luxury I just don’t have a right to.

Even the word depression itself was the terminological product of an effort to soften the connotation of deep trouble. In the last century, the term crisis was normally employed. With time, however, this acquired the connotation of the misfortune it described.

It’s a very American illness, the idea of giving yourself away entirely to the idea of working in order to achieve some sort of brass ring that usually involves people feeling some way about you – I mean, people wonder why we walk around feeling alienated and lonely and stressed out.

The word “depressed” is spoken phonetically as “deep rest”. We can view depression not as a mental illness, but on a deeper level, as a profound, and very misunderstood, state of deep rest, entered into when we are completely exhausted by the weight of our own identity.

I am so sick and tired of everyone with their complaints about PTSD, depression. Everyone wants their hand held, and a check – a government check. What are you, the only generation that had PTSD? The only generation that's depressed? I'm sick of it. I can't take the celebration of weakness and depression. See, I was raised a little differently. I was raised to fight weakness. I was raised to fight pain. I was raised to fight depression. Not to give into it. Not to cave into it and cry like a little baby in bed. "Boo-hoo-hoo. Boo-hoo-hoo." Everyone has depression in their life. Everyone has sickness and sadness and disease. And loss of relatives. And loss of career. Everyone has depression in their life. But if the whole nation is told, "boo-hoo-hoo, come and get a medication, come and get treatment, talk about mental illness", you know what you wind up with? You wind up with Obama in the White House and liars in every phase of the government. That's what you wind up with. It's a weak, sick, nation. A weak, sick, broken nation. And you need men like me to save the country. You need men to stand up and say stop crying like a baby over everything. Stand up already. Stop telling me how sick you are and sad you are. Talk about the good things in your life. When have you last heard that? Oh, everyone's holding their hand. "Oh, welcome to Good Morning America, sir. You almost committed suicide, how interesting. Please tell us your story." Maybe a young child who's on the edge can commit suicide. What a country. No wonder we're being laughed at around the world. No wonder ISIS can defeat our military. Take a look at that. Take a look at that, why people aren't even getting married anymore to have children. They don't even have the guts to raise a child. The men are so weak, and so narcissistic, all they want to do is have fun. Bunch of losers. Just go have a brewski and look at the 49ers, you idiot, you. They won't even get married, won't have a child, it takes too much of a man to do that. What a country. You're not a man, you're a dog. A dog raises babies better than most American men do.

Depression is one of the unknown modes of being.
There are no words for a world without a self, seen with impersonal clarity.
All language can register is the slow return
to oblivion we call health when imagination automatically recolors the landscape
and habit blurs perception and language
takes up its routine flourishes.

"I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words constitute an argument."