Death Quote by Caitlin Doughty

““It is worth noting that the main players in the recomposition project are women—scientists, anthropologists, lawyers, architects. Educated women, who have the privilege to devote their efforts to righting a wrong. They’ve given prominent space in their professional careers to changing the current system of death. Katrina noted that “humans are so focused on preventing aging and decay—it’s become an obsession. And for those who have been socialized female, that pressure is relentless. So decomposition becomes a radical act. It’s a way to say, ‘I love and accept myself.””

Caitlin Doughty

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 2.2 out of 5 (6 ratings)

Death Educated women

More by Caitlin Doughty

“Dead people look very, very dead. It is difficult to grasp what that means, since it’s unlikely that any of us will stumble across a roving pack of dead bodies in the wild. We live in a world where people rarely die in their homes, and if they do, they’re carted off to the funeral home the second after taking…

Caitlin Doughty

“The most salacious stories—bones ground in a metal blender or torture-spike eye caps—had the power to disrupt people’s polite complacency about death. Rather than…

Caitlin Doughty

Image

“We do not (and will not) have the resources to properly care for our increasing elderly population, yet we insist on medical intervention to keep them alive. To allow them to die would signal the failure of our supposedly infallible modern medical system. The surgeon Atul Gawande wrote in a devastating New Yorker article on aging that “there have been…

Caitlin Doughty

“He explained that he talks about death "all the time" with his friends. They ask each other, "Hey, what you want when you die?"…

Caitlin Doughty

Image

“Many children and grandchildren of immigrants, have, like Sarah, found themselves severed from their family’s cultural rituals. The funeral system in the United States…

Caitlin Doughty

Image

“I have come to believe that the merits of a death custom are not based on mathematics (e.g., 36.7 percent a "barbarous act"), but…

Caitlin Doughty

Image

“It was death that the public was being cheated out of by the funeral industry, not money. The realistic interaction with death and the…

Caitlin Doughty

Image

“Exposing a young child to the realities of love and death is far less dangerous than exposing them to the lie of the happy…

Caitlin Doughty

Image

“Rather than let author and environmentalist Edward Abbey be buried in a traditional cemetery, his friends stole his body, wrapped it in a sleeping bag, and hauled it in the back of his pickup truck to the Cabeza Prieta Desert in Arizona. They drove down a long dirt road and dug a hole when they reached the end of it,…

Caitlin Doughty

“The ICU was not the thrill ride I had expected. Turns out, they never called the high school student in from the reception desk…

Caitlin Doughty

Image

“Death should be known. Known as a difficult mental, physical, and emotional process, respected and feared for what it is.”

Caitlin Doughty

Image

“Untreated, a dead person’s face looks horrific, at least by our very narrow cultural expectations. Their droopy, open eyes cloud over in a vacant stare. Their mouths stretch wide like Edvard Munch’s The Scream. The color drains from their faces. These images reflect the normal biological processes of death, but they are not what a family wants to see. As…

Caitlin Doughty

Explore all 56 Caitlin Doughty quotes

More Death quotes

“He wondered how it was fair that your dying should depend so much on when you were born.”

Mitch Albom

Image

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and pecularities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of…

Octavio Paz

Most of us are convinced that we are our egos, which is who we think we are. The ego is part of our incarnation.…

Ram Dass

Image

I do not want to live at the cost of the life even of a snake. I should let him bite me to death…

Mahatma Gandhi

Image

“It was beautiful. He thought he had never seen anything so beautiful in all his life; that, having seen it, he could die content, knowing that he would never see anything so beautiful again. He wished he could have seen it for longer. More, he wished he could have taken it apart, studied it all the way down to its…

Mira Grant

With multiplayer, permanent death, and an ever-changing world to explore and conquer, 'A Valley Without Wind' might be the place you're looking for if…

Rob Manuel

Image

“What did you see?” she asked gently. His brow furrowed, as if he could not understand the question. Then his eyes turned to the paper on which he'd been writing. They went to the quill that he seemed surprised to see in his hand. When he turned to look at her again, fresh tears spilled from Michel de Nostredame's eyes.…

J. Anthony Torino