Quotes on Smoking
Opinionated quotations from the famous and not-so-famous.

My favorite gum.

Extra Fruit Sensations (Sweet Tropical).

Quitting Tips from Nick

If you are thinking of giving up smoking, I'd recommend it. The first week was the most difficult. I used apples and oranges. Oranges were better as they took a while to peel so were more hassle than an apple, also very good from a health point of view. You have to change your routine and habits completely, avoid situations where you'd usually smoke. It's nice to have energy, it's nice to have good skin, its nice to not cough up chunks of blackened lung tissue every morning, it's nice to taste food properly, it's nice to be able to run, it's nice not to stink like an ashtray.

Nick Simpson

Quitting Tips from 'Chris'

While quitting smoking, I found that licorice — believe it or not — was effective in filling many gaps that contributed to the difficulty of nicotine withdrawal. Licorice is shaped in a similar fashion to cigarettes, provides instant gratification in a continuous manner with no ill effects (if you buy the sugar-free kind, obviously), simulates the same consistent hand-to-mouth actions associated with cigarettes, and does trigger dopamine — the body's natural reaction to nicotine, and the major reason for its addictive effects — with its strong flavor and hardened-syrup components. It's also cheaper. [Red licorice is supposed to be 'safer' since some types of black licorice can cause health problems. Check with your doctor before trying any tips or changing your diet.]

In tandem with this strategy, buy fresh oranges and make a habit of slicing one up for yourself every couple of hours. If the craving starts to get out of control, suck on a slice of orange for all it's worth. Go through the whole piece of fruit, and try to savor it, going slowly while watching a movie or listening to music. (Keep an eye on your fingers, of course — nicotine withdrawal affects your dexterity.) Oranges really do help. And think of the healthy side-effects.

Along with exercise (the release of endorphins will supersede the craving of nicotine, in a way that will utterly shock you), these things will help you quit smoking much more easily than an expensive quitting aid found at a drug store, which will often merely replace one habit with another.

If you slip and have a cigarette, don't become defeatist and give up, thinking you've failed. YOU HAVE NOT. Everybody who tries to quit smoking slips a few times. EVERYBODY. With persistence, you will quit — if you really want to. For you.

'Chris'

It is easier to stay out than get out.

Mark Twain

Am I self-righteous? Why not? It's not like I can count on you to be righteous for me.

Henry Rollins

When I tell any truth it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do.

William Blake

You know what? My father died at the age of 53, about 10 years ago, to smoking. And my grandfather died at 49. I've never smoked a cigarette in my entire life. So I find it really hard, and it's a bitter pill for me to swallow, to sit and watch these guys smoke their lives away earlier than anticipated. I can't understand how you can taste food, reflect it, smoke, go back and taste it. There has to be an inaccuracy beyond belief.

I'm not their dad. I'm not there to mother them. But more importantly, I wish to hell they could understand the damage in terms their palate. A refined palate is a trained palate. Smoking at the same time - it's hard. Smoking is the one thing that I find it hard to tolerate. And it frustrates me.

Secondly, you know, when you train a palate, it's like being an athlete. Every part of your body is toned. When you bring dishes and an ingredient together and it's missing something, it's complicated. It's your palate that gets you there in the end. So if I could ban smoking for every chef in the world as a mission, I'd start tonight.

Chef Gordon Ramsay from TV Guy's Guide to Good TV

Are you a public smoker that whines about the self-righteousness and 'negativity' of some people who refuse to suck on burning tubes of paper filled with chemical-soaked chopped up leaves? OK, so you painfully attack our lungs and nasal passages with your perverted public pollution and we're supposed to be positive, pat you on the back, and tell you that everything is fine? Everything is not fine. You violate our bodies. You give us pain. You're no better than a rapist. Until you come to your senses, you are the enemy.

Duane Alan Hahn

Note:

If you are bothered by the words "you're no better than a rapist" in the quote above, according to the dictionary, rape can be "any violation or abuse: the rape of justice." If you suck on a burning tube of chopped leaves near people who don't smoke, you are violating and abusing their respiratory organs. You're basically shoving a flaming phallus down their throats and ejaculating smoke into their lungs.

Smoking areas in restaurants are like peeing areas in swimming pools.

Unknown

Even after your cigarette is long gone, you have an aura of stench that constantly emanates from your body and clothing. A smoker is like a guy who dumped gas on himself while filling up a lawnmower. He can't smell it, but everyone within 100 feet can. The next time somebody coughs when you walk by, don't assume it's 'fake.' You stink.

Duane Alan Hahn

The entire issue concerning sidestream smoke . . . has been minimized by the industry. If a group of terrorists decided to place a poison gas in public places there would be public outrage and prompt reaction.

William Farone (former Philip Morris scientist)

What "right to smoke?" Do I have a right to light up a sulfur candle in the middle of a crowd? Or set off a 4-Gone fogger? What would happen if I ran around with a can of Black Flag, spraying it in the faces of passersby at random? I'd be arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, and probably also brought up on terrorism charges, and I'd deserve it mightily. So why do people addicted to inhaling an insecticide (not only is it a common ingredient in organic bug sprays; that's also its function in the tobacco plant) believe they have a right to spew noxious, toxic, carcinogenic fumes all over the place in public?

James H. H. Lampert

You own yourself, so if you want to do something that destroys yourself, go ahead. Just don't harm others when you do.

Jim Goebel

Some smokers and ex-smokers like to say that all people have vices that harm others and smoking is no different from other bad habits such as overeating. Well, I don't know about you, but I'd rather have an overweight person standing next to me than a smoker or a drunk or a person who is high on drugs. Some vices have a more immediate detrimental effect on the wellbeing of others. Pointing fingers at other vices doesn't change the fact that public smokers attack the lungs and nasal passages of innocent bystanders, giving at least some of them instant pain and discomfort.

Duane Alan Hahn

Pleasure which must be enjoyed at the expense of another's pain, can never be enjoyed by a worthy mind. Pleasure's couch is virtue's grave.

Augustine J. Duganne

Recent studies have found that nonsmoking women are more susceptible to DNA damage than nonsmoking men when exposed to an environmental carcinogen. Secondhand smoke is a known risk factor for lung cancer, which still kills more women and men than any other single cancer.

PARADE - page 16 - October 9, 2005

Public smokers love to label those who don't want to breathe in their smoke as whiners. The unnatural act of smoking somehow became the default condition over the years in the minds of millions, so we have 'anti-smokers' and 'non-smokers' as if smoking is normal. People are finally waking up and saying "Wait a minute, smokers are the perverted ones, not me! Not smoking is the default condition!"

Smokers should be called 'anti-fresh-air-icans' or 'anti-pulmonarians' or 'non-humanitarians' or just plain old lung terrorists. The good news is that people's minds are becoming less clouded, which means that smokers are losing their stranglehold on the public, so now smokers have become the whiners.

Duane Alan Hahn

If I decided to act like a crazed monkey, flinging feces at everyone around me wherever I went, and a glob of it hit you in the face, you probably wouldn't like it because it's a health hazard and it stinks. Would it be OK for me to say to you, "If you don't like it, go somewhere else! I have rights too!"?

Duane Alan Hahn

Cigars are no safe alternative act.

Rep. Edward J. Markey

Health concerns aside, here's a question for smokers who don't understand that they have an unpleasant odor. Have you ever known someone who had breath that smelled like it came straight from the back end of a horse? Well, you stink just as bad to many non-smokers and that's why some of them avoid you whenever possible. You stink long after the smoke clears. The stench clings to you and your clothing. If it's true that over 60 percent of taste comes from smell, you can understand why many non-smokers don't want you to smoke in a restaurant while they are trying to eat. Smokers ruin the taste of food.

Duane Alan Hahn

After years of denial and deception, the Philip Morris company has admitted that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer and other diseases. This formal acknowledgment comes far too late but still we must all welcome it. It can be the beginning of clearing the air.

Bill Clinton

Take your life back from the tobacco companies. They don't own you anymore.

Duane Alan Hahn

No one ever got sick or died from second-hand fat.

Unknown

If you're smart enough to avoid smoke from a pile of burning leaves in your back yard, why would you voluntarily suck smoke from the burning leaves of a cigarette?

Duane Alan Hahn

Researchers linked smoking to cancer in the 1950s. Doctors believed them in the 1960s, but it was not until journalists believed the doctors in the 1970s that the public took notice.

Richard Peto

Wisdom and self-control are the reins that keep your freedoms from trampling the crowd. When you refuse to rein in your improper freedoms while in public or with your children, the battle is on.

Duane Alan Hahn

To see what is right, and not do it, is want of courage, or of principle.

Confucius

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

Mal Pancoast

A cigarette is the only consumer product which when used as directed kills its consumer.

Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland

When are people going to realize that breathing in smoke from anything that burns is not a good idea?

Duane Alan Hahn

You know, it's cigarettes that killed Jerry Garcia. Everyone thinks it's heroin, but it wasn't. It was cigarettes.

John Mellencamp (adapted)

If we lose the battle against tobacco, we will lose the war against cancer.

John Arradondo

The only 'safer' cigarette is your last one.

Duane Alan Hahn

If they made all cigars and cigarettes in the shape of a certain male body part, most men would stop smoking immediately. Maybe that wouldn't happen because cigars pretty much look like that anyway and you'll still see men licking and sucking on them as if they were hungrily welcoming a boyfriend who just came back from a long trip.

Duane Alan Hahn

If you ever lit a cigarette in your life, you have very little will to live.

God Coversations with God (Book 1) through Neale Donald Walsch (adapted)

Many people who smoke are selfish. All that matters is their habit. They seem to love their addiction more than anything or anyone else. They don't care if their suffocating toxic smoke makes other people sick. They don't even seem to care if they give their own children or grandchildren headaches, bronchitis, nose-bleeds, or any other breathing or health problems.

They refuse to see the damage they do to other people and they don't seem to care. If they really cared about other people, they would at least go outside to smoke. But they usually just spout things like, "it's my house" or "I have rights too."

Message to smokers:

Stop trying to find excuses for your abuse of others and grow up.

Duane Alan Hahn

The real reason for this $100 cigarette butt-throwing fine is (a.) we don't want litter on our streets and (b.) it costs a lot of money to clean up. When I tell you we get 5,000 butts a week, I'm not exaggerating. It's horrendous.

Clif Madrack (adapted)

Before you throw that cigarette butt, remember, that's fire burning at the end of that cancer stick. You are responsible for any property damage or lives lost because of your careless act.

Duane Alan Hahn

Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

Abraham H. Maslow

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Arthur Schopenhauer

We make a ladder for ourselves out of our vices when we trample them.

St. Augustine

No cause is helpless if it is just. Errors, no matter how popular, carry the seeds of their own destruction.

John W. Scoville

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.

Plato

Man's natural character is to imitate; that of the sensitive man is to resemble as closely as possible the person whom he loves. It is only by imitating the vices of others that I have earned my misfortunes.

Marquis de Sade

Smoking and Children Quotes

I used to smoke in my home, but since I have stopped, my kids don't get ear infections anymore and the colds are fewer. Not to mention how my computer hardware has benefited. The nicotine and tar is hard on fans, etc.

Ed Wenthe

Having a smoking parent increases a child's chance of getting an ear infection by 50 percent. The particles in tobacco can cause chronic congestion, which makes it harder for the Eustachian tube to drain fluid from the middle ear and sets the infant up for an ear infection. Some parents don't smoke in the same room as the baby, or smoke outside, but this doesn't help because the baby can still breathe in smoke from your hair and clothes. It's difficult to quit, but use your infant's health as the motivation.

Anne Beal, MD from an article on page 28 of 'American Baby' magazine 'Oh, What a Pain!' (December 2001)

When it comes to smoking, there's this big loophole. With alcohol, underage kids can't buy it, possess it or use it. Underage kids can't buy cigarettes, why do we let them smoke?

John Sponauer

When a behavior is perceived to be the norm, kids are more likely to think it's OK.

Peter Mulhall

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

James Baldwin

The 16- to 20-year-old begins smoking for psychosocial reasons. The act of smoking is symbolic: It signifies adulthood. He smokes to enhance his image in the eyes of his peers.

From a Philip Morris report

Don't even bring cigarettes into the house. You already know that your spouse, your sister, and your dad shouldn't light up around your kids, since secondhand smoke ups the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma, and ear infections. New research has found that unless cigarettes are banned from every room in the house, there's no measurable benefit for babies and children. If there's any smoking in the home, kids suffer.

But just as essential is your attitude about smoking. A parent who asks his child to bring him his cigarettes, light one up, or clean out the ashtray is paving the way for the child to pick up the habit, say experts.

Aviva Patz from an article on page 100 of 'Parenting' magazine 'Boost Your Child's Health' (December-January 2004)

Secondhand smoke is an environmental trigger of asthma, the cause of an estimated ten million missed school days for children in the U.S. It is estimated that up to 1 million children have aggravated asthma symptoms caused by secondhand smoke.

Martha Casey (adapted)

I come from a family that had smokers in it until I was a teen. Even though my Mother and I did not smoke, we both had respiratory problems until we were away from those smoking family members for several years. Cigarette smoking helped aggravate the cancer that killed my grandmother and sped up the heart disease that killed my grandfather. I lived it. I know the truth. Smoking has no place in the home.

Duane Alan Hahn

Because children have unique vulnerabilities - they absorb greater concentrations of smoke than adults do from the same exposure - we must use greater caution in protecting them from environmental threats to their health. One of the ways parents and caregivers can do this is by taking the Smoke-Free Home Pledge - simply choosing not to smoke, and not letting others smoke, in your home or anywhere children are present. Of course, we encourage people to quit smoking entirely. We realize that is difficult, so until they can take that step, we ask that they smoke outside.

EPA Administrator Christie Whitman

People may have the inalienable right to poison themselves, but they certainly have no right to poison you or your child. If you were in a store shopping and someone came up and slapped your kid in the face, what would you do? You could have that person arrested. But let that same person blow malodorous filthy smoke into your child's face and lungs and you're supposed to "realize that smokers have rights, too." Well, that's a real interesting concept. Because people have the insane, perverted habit of poisoning themselves, they expect the sane segment of the population to stand idly by while they impose their perversion on others.

From Living Health by Harvey & Marilyn Diamond (adapted)

It's nice if you're the kind of smoker who smokes outside away from others. You're even careful not to let your smoke blow in other people's faces out there. At least you, the polite smoker, are not inflicting it on others. But, you are inflicting it on others if you allow children to see you smoke. You're giving children the idea that smoking is OK by your example. If you're trying to quit, let children know about it and tell them why. If you're not trying to quit, how about starting now? It's about time.

Duane Alan Hahn

Marijuana Quotes

We must never forget that marijuana is the drug of peace and love. Just ask all of the gang members who smoke it during their drive-by murders.

Duane Alan Hahn

For the first time, our investigation shows tobacco is not the only smoked substance that sets in motion the molecular events which can lead to lung cancer.

Dr. Sanford Barsky

There are people who think that smoking a lot of marijuana leads to divine guidance, but the only thing it leads to is cancer and a clouded mind.

Duane Alan Hahn

Marijuana is damaging to the lungs and pulmonary system because users often inhale the unfiltered smoke deeply and then hold it in their lungs as long as possible. Marijuana smoke contains more cancer-causing agents than tobacco smoke.

Adapted from drugfreeschools.com which doesn't seem to exist anymore

During 20 years of examining human cells, I have never found any other drug, including heroin, which came close to the DNA damage caused by marijuana.

Dr. Akira Morishima

Specialist in Cellular Heredity

Columbia University

God also created poison ivy. Do you want to smoke that too? The fact that a plant exists does not mean that God wants you to smoke it.

Duane Alan Hahn

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