“Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death.”

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by la…" by Milan Kundera?
Milan Kundera photo
Milan Kundera 198
Czech author of Czech and French literature 1929–2023

Related quotes

Peter Medawar photo

“But Watson had one towering advantage over all of them: in addition to being extremely clever he had something important to be clever about.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

This is an advantage which scientists enjoy over most other people engaged in intellectual pursuits, and they enjoy it at all levels of capability. To be a first-rate scientist it is not necessary (and certainly not sufficient) to be extremely clever, anyhow in a pyrotechnic sense. One of the great social revolutions brought about by scientific research has been the democratization of learning. Anyone who combines strong common sense with an ordinary degree of imaginativeness can become a creative scientist, and a happy one besides, in so far as happiness depends upon being able to develop to the limit of one's abilities.
1960s, Lucky Jim, 1968

Mark Twain photo
Iain Banks photo

“One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them. We here are not children, Mr. Gurgeh.”

Hamin waved the pipestem round the tables of people. “Rules and laws exist only because we take pleasure in doing what they forbid, but as long as most of the people obey such proscriptions most of the time, they have done their job; blind obedience would imply we are—ha!”—Hamin chuckled and pointed at the drone with the pipe—“no more than robots!”
Source: Culture series, The Player of Games (1988), Chapter 2 (p. 279).

Milton Friedman photo

“The case for is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

America's Drug Forum interview (1991)
Context: The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good.
The case for is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it's in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they'll do you harm, why isn't it all right to say you must not eat too much because you'll do harm? Why isn't it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die? Why isn't it all right to say, "Oh, skiing, that's no good, that's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself"? Where do you draw the line?

“In Poland, many doctors would not undertake euthanasia due to religious beliefs. The Dutch are more pragmatic, and death is not a great taboo for them, but part of the natural turn of things.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

Tomasz Vetulani o Holandii, niskim kraju http://www.nto.pl/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110605/REPORTAZ01/762330357, nto.pl, 5 June 2011 (in Polish)

Dave Eggers photo
Arthur Conan Doyle photo
Guy De Maupassant photo
River Phoenix photo

Related topics