Political Quotes

“September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day. I had occasion to visit with our former colleague, Gordon Smith, a tremendously good Senator from the State of Oregon, while I was in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. Even now we often speak--as we did in Las Vegas that evening--about our experience with those who have committed suicide. Gordon lost a son, I lost a father, and there are a small number of people here in this room today--if we could do an oral poll, we would find that many people in this room have been affected by suicide. Think about it. Each year, about 33,000 people commit suicide. That is a lot of people. It took me a while to accept not feeling sorry for myself and to try to do something about it, and we have done some things here as a body about suicide. We really don't understand it very well. For example, most suicides occur in the western part of the United States. I would have thought just the opposite. The West has bright, sunshiny skies, and the weather is a lot better than places like New York, but for some reason, west of the Mississippi, we have a problem with suicide that doesn't occur in other places. It is a national problem, and we have to do something about it. We have 33,000 people die every year, and those are the ones we know about. There are hunting accidents, car accidents, and hiking accidents that are really suicides but they are not acknowledged as such.…”