Quotes About Suffering From Cancer

“Listen: I'm not going to tell you what to do. We cannot make decisions for you. We came to help, but we do not want to interfere. We gave you a gift, yours to do with as you will. But you've heard all that before. We're happy to talk. To answer questions about why we don't stop war and suffering, cure cancer, end poverty, point the way to heaven or point out that there is no heaven. Ask us anything. We don't mind. We try our best to be candid, but there is an inevitable degree of mutual incomprehension. Because your qualia aren't our qualia. Because we're running models of who you think you are and what you think you know, but they're just models. Because the map isn't the territory. Because we aren't gods. We aren't even close. You know? At best, we're pipers at the gates of dawn. Who have come to this little blue planet to help.”

— Paul McAuley

“So at family gatherings ... I try to stick to the acceptable script. Indeed, I discover that the less I say, the happier everyone seems to be with me. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn't have been better off as a paraplegic or afflicted by some tragic form of cancer. The invisibility and periodicity of my disorder, along with how often I border on normalcy, allows them to evade my need for their understanding. And because our most enduring family heirloom is avoidance and denial of pain and suffering, I don't need much prompting to shut myself down in their presence.”

— Kiera Van Gelder

“Eventually sinking into despair, [Heinrich von Kleist] shot himself in 1811 as part of a suicide pact made with a woman suffering from incurable cancer.”

— Nicholas Tucker

“Though sporting a hideous mustache is in no way comparable to the physical pain and mental suffering men with these diseases endure, Movember still forces participants to challenge their manhood on a daily basis. Growing a moustache for men's cancer isn't as feel-good an activity as running a marathon for a cure.”

— David Sax

“No death, no suffering. No funeral homes, abortion clinics, or psychiatric wards. No rape, missing children, or drug rehabilitation centers. No bigotry, no muggings or killings. No worry or depression or economic downturns. No wars, no unemployment. No anguish over failure and miscommunication. No con men. No locks. No death. No mourning. No pain. No boredom. No arthritis, no handicaps, no cancer, no taxes, no bills, no computer crashes, no weeds, no bombs, no drunkenness, no traffic jams and accidents, no septic-tank backups. No mental illness. No unwanted e-mails. Close friendships but no cliques, laughter but no put-downs. Intimacy, but no temptation to immorality. No hidden agendas, no backroom deals, no betrayals. Imagine mealtimes full of stories, laughter, and joy, without fear of insensitivity, inappropriate behavior, anger, gossip, lust, jealousy, hurt feelings, or anything that eclipses joy. That will be Heaven.”

— Randy Alcorn

“If we include hedonistic philosophy in hospitals, the lives of patients suffering from cancer would be much, much better.”

— Michel Onfray

“In addition to relieving patient suffering, research is needed to help reduce the enormous economic and social burdens posed by chronic diseases such as osteoporosis, arthritis, diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, cancer, heart disease, and stroke.”

— Ike Skelton

“My family understands the pain of struggling with a loved one who's suffering from a blood-related cancer, and we seek to support those who are working to find a cure.”

— Nadia Bjorlin

“We have lost close friends and relatives to cancer and Parkinson's disease, and the level of personal suffering inflicted on patients and their families by these diseases is horrific.”

— Peter Jackson

“Reducing the price of AIDS drugs gave me so much satisfaction that I've been thinking what else I could do. One day, I thought, 'Let's look at cancer and see how we can spare cancer patients' unnecessary suffering.'”

— Yusuf Hamied

“Earlier this month, the Vatican's top bioethics official condemned as "reprehensible" the assisted suicide of an East Bay woman, Brittany Maynard, who was suffering terminal brain cancer and said she wanted to die with dignity. Francis didn't refer to the Maynard case specifically. While denouncing euthanasia in general, he also condemned abortion, in vitro fertilization and embryonic stem cell research.”

— Anonymous.

“In high school, I had two friends that were suffering from cancer. I would go and sing for them while they were in hospital, and I sang at their services after they passed.”

— Matthew Morrison

“When you go through a long illness, certainly one of cancer, there's a certain release from it and relief that it has come to an end, because the suffering can be unbearable, as opposed to an abrupt stop to life when they go out the door and there's a loved one who never comes home because of some accident.”

— Pierce Brosnan

“One of their first decisions was to donate Robin's body to Memorial Sloan Kettering. The doctors told them that they could learn from studying her disease, and my parents hoped that Robin's death might lead to some benefit for other suffering children. Childhood cancer research became a lifelong cause for them.”

— George W. Bush

“I have learned that being a politician is not an easy job. My father was trying to make progress in the peace treaty with the Soviet Union. At that time, he was suffering from last-stage cancer, but he visited Moscow in the bitter cold. I learned from my father that you may have to risk your own life to make such a historic accomplishment.”

— Shinzo Abe

“Giving cancer to laboratory animals has not and will not help us to understand the disease or to treat those persons suffering from it.”

— Albert Sabin

“To say ... that Laetrile should not be continued to be used by those who are suffering from terminal cancer, I would have to hang my head in shame.”

— Luther L. Bohanon

“Suicidal thinking, if serious, can be a kind of death scare, comparable to suffering a heart attack or undergoing a cancer operation. One survives such a phase both warier and chastened. When-ten years ago-I emerged from a bad dip into suicidal speculation, I felt utterly exhausted and yet quite fearless of ordinary dangers, vastly afraid of myself but much less scared of extraneous eventualities.”

— Edward Hoagland

“Clean water is a necessity that we can no longer take for granted. Each year more people die of water related diseases than any other cause of death on this planet. With a higher rate of suffering and mortality than diabetes, cancer, high cholesterol, or war; or any two combined for that matter! An entire economy is growing around water. Those without money are suffering the most and risk severe illness from contaminated sources”

— Jewel

“We can change our thinking. Rather than viewing the chemical adulteration of our environment and our bodies as the inevitable practice of convenience and progress, we can decide that cancer is inconvenient and toxic pollution archaic and primitive. We can start seeing the creation of carcinogens as the result of outmoded technologies. We can demand green engineering and green chemistry. We can let our systems of industry and agriculture know that they are suffering from a design flaw.”

— Sandra Steingraber

“If you could read some of the stories that we had before us of parents of children dying of, let's say, bone cancer. Or people who dealt with family members drowning in their own bodies, in the end, suffering without any hope of modern medical science easing their pain or offering any comfort. With the absolute knowledge that they were going to die anyway. I can't quite comprehend how we could want those people to continue to suffer that extreme agony on the understanding that it is the will of a creator or some other philosophical concept.”

— Kelvin Ogilvie

“The Bucket List is a movie about two old codgers who are nothing like people, both suffering from cancer that is nothing like cancer, and setting off on adventures that are nothing like possible. I urgently advise hospitals: Do not make the DVD available to your patients; there may be an outbreak of bedpans thrown at TV screens.”

— Roger Ebert

“Our society is turning toward more and more needless consumption. It is a vicious circle that I compare to cancer ... Should we eliminate suffering, diseases? The idea is beautiful, but perhaps not a benefit for the long term. We should not allow our dread of diseases to endanger the future of our species ... In order to stabilize world population, we need to eliminate 350,000 people a day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it's just as bad not to say it.”

— Jacques-Yves Cousteau

“The SAD diet - (the Standard American Diet) - can only make you sad. Eating meat and dairy products is the SAD diet. It causes heart disease, cancer, diabetes and makes you fat. Raising animals for food destroys the environment. And those animals are not happy - they are enslaved and live humiliating, fearful lives of abuse and tremendous suffering. Billons are murdered every year. That's a lot of suffering - all for no good reason. Veganism turns sadness into joy - Simple Recipes for Joy!”

— Sharon Gannon

“Social reform is the desperate decision to remove corns from a person suffering from cancer.”

— Karl Kraus

“So if there is a purpose to the suffering that is cancer, I think it must be this: it's meant to improve us.”

— Lance Armstrong