Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Norman Cousins

I am told that nothing that we do on earth, and nothing that we make on earth, is in as great abundance as force. We now have 30,000 pounds of destructive force, TNT equivalent, available for every human being on earth. We don't have 30,000 pounds of food or medicine or art or books or any of the things that ennoble life, but we have 30,000 pounds of instant force for every human being on earth.

Abundance | Art | Books | Earth | Force | Life | Life | Nothing | Art |

Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL

Resist beginnings: it is too late to employ medicine when the evil has grown strong by inveterate habit.

Evil | Habit |

Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL

The art of medicine is a question of timeliness.

Art | Question | Art |

Paul Tournier

Now, we shall be able to judge the extent of the spiritual undernourishment if we look at all these movements from another angle: not as errors but rather as attempts to find healing. I use this comparison: For a long time medical men combated fever as if it itself constituted the illness. Medicine today inclines rather to respect it, not only as a symptom of the disease but of the struggle of the organism against the disease. True, it is this struggle which makes it ill, and yet this very struggle is also the proof of its vitality and is the necessary way to healing.

Consequences | Diet | Disease | Disobedience | God | Inevitable | Intemperance | Men | Respect | Struggle | Thought | Time | Work | Wrong | Respect |

Paul Tournier

Most illnesses do not, as is generally thought, come like a bolt out of the blue. The ground is prepared for years, through faulty diet, intemperance, overwork, and moral conflicts, slowly eroding the subject’s vitality. And when at last the illness suddenly shows itself, it would be a most superficial medicine which treated it without going back to its remote causes, to all that I call “personal problems.” There are personal problems in every life. There are secret tragedies in every heart. “Man does not die,” a doctor has remarked. “He kills himself”... Every act of physical, psychological, or moral disobedience of God’s purpose is an act of wrong living and has its inevitable consequences.

Consequences | Diet | Disobedience | God | Heart | Inevitable | Intemperance | Life | Life | Man | Problems | Purpose | Purpose | Thought | Wrong |

William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet

Temperance, that virtue without pride, and fortune without envy, that gives indolence of body with an equality of mind; the best guardian of youth and support of old age; the precept of reason as well as religion, and physician of the soul as well as the body; the tutelary goddess of health and universal medicine of life.

Age | Body | Envy | Equality | Fortune | Health | Indolence | Life | Life | Mind | Old age | Precept | Pride | Reason | Religion | Soul | Virtue | Virtue | Youth | Youth | Old |

William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet

The greatest pleasure in life is love; the greatest possession is health; the greatest ease is sleep; and the greatest medicine is a true friend.

Friend | Health | Life | Life | Love | Pleasure |

Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes fo mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and yo have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another matter whether he ever opens the box or not.

Crime | Man | Mankind | Suffering | Teach | Wisdom |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

Regimen is better than physic. Every one should be his own physician. We ought to assist, and not to force nature. Eat with moderation what agrees with your constitution. Nothing is good for the body but what we can digest. With medicine can procure digestion? Exercise. What will recruit strength? Sleep. What will alleviate incurable evils? Patience.

Better | Body | Force | Good | Moderation | Nature | Nothing | Patience | Strength | Will | Moderation |

Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.

Magic | Men | Mistake | Religion | Science |

Gabriel García Márquez, aka Gabo

No medicine cures what happiness cannot.

Happiness |

Gretel Ehrlich

Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often hides.

Ivan Illich

Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organized to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.

People |

Jerome K. Jerome, fully Jerome Klapka Jerome

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form.

Disease | Suffering |

Joseph Fletcher, fully Joseph Francis Fletcher

Ethics critically examines values and how they are to be acted out; but whether they are acted out or not, loyalty to them depends on character or personal quality, and so it follows that the quality of medicine depends on the character of its clinicians.

Character | Loyalty | Loyalty |

Kate Millet, Katherine Murray Millett

Indeed the involuntary character of psychiatric treatment is at odds with the spirit and ethics of medicine itself.

Character | Ethics | Spirit |