Karl A. Menninger

Is it hard for the reader to believe that suicides are sometimes committed to forestall the committing of murder? There is no doubt of it. Nor is there any doubt that murder is sometimes committed to avert suicide.

We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to do.

Police are not all bad guys. Nobody is all bad guys.

One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways.

Hope is a necessity for normal life and the major weapon against the suicide impulse.

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.