Quackery Quotes

• Quackery gives birth to nothing; gives death to all things.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Giving, Birth, All Things

  Heroes and Hero-Worship Lect. I

  42 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are two kinds of truth; The truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The fist of these is science and the second is art.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, Science, Light

  Raymond Chandler (1976). “The notebooks of Raymond Chandler and English summer: a gothic romance”, Ecco

  67 Copy quote

  Show source

• From powerful causes spring the empiric's gains, Man's love of life, his weakness, and his pains; These first induce him the vile trash to try, Then lend his name, that other men may buy.

  George Crabbe

  Pain, Powerful, Spring

  George Crabbe (1834). “The Poetical Works with His Letters and Journals and His Life by His Son. - London, John Murray 1834”, p.135

  63 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Successful, Men, Medicine

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.197, Delphi Classics

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pessimism: A valuable protection against quackery.

  John Ralston Saul

  Protection, Pessimism, Valuable

  John Ralston Saul (2012). “The Doubter's Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense”, p.230, Simon and Schuster

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• The claim of alternative practitioners to not treat disease labels but the whole patient...allows alternative practitioners to live in a fool's paradise of quackery where they believe themselves to be protected from any challenges and demands for evidence.

  Edzard Ernst

  Believe, Challenges, Alternatives

  19 Copy quote

• Heroes have gone out; quacks have come in; the reign of quacks has not ended with the nineteenth century. The sceptre is held with a firmer grasp; the empire has a wider boundary. We are all the slaves of quackery in one shape or another. Indeed, one portion of our being is always playing the successful quack to the other.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Hero, Successful, Reign

  12 Copy quote

• But however mysterious is nature , however ignorant the doctor, however imperfect the present state of physical science , the patronage and the success of quacks and quackeries are infinitely more wonderful than those of honest and laborious men of science and their careful experiments.

  P. T. Barnum

  Men, Doctors, Ignorant

  P. T. Barnum (2013). “The Humbugs of the World”, p.149, Lulu.com

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• But what is quackery? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing his body alone. There is need of a physician who shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls between two stools.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Fall, Men, Soul And Body

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Illustrated "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers"”, p.257, Princeton University Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• In 1966 the ACS formulated a State Model Cancer Act which was instrumental in the enactment of anti-quackery laws now enforced in 9 states...In California (it is a) felony...The use of unproven methods is also a criminal offense in Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

  Jane Brody

  Cancer, Dark, Illinois

  7 Copy quote

• The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Soul, Church

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.70, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable--that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him.

  H. L. Mencken

  Liars, Lying, Eye

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.325, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Religious, Taken, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.97, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Philanthropies and charities have a certain air of quackery.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Air, Charity, Philanthropy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.203, Library of America

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those who condemn the supreme certainty of mathematics feed on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of the sophistical sciences which lead to eternal quackery.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Inspirational, Life, Confusion

  Leonardo (da Vinci), Irma A. Richter, Thereza Wells (2008). “Notebooks”, p.9, Oxford University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am as non-accepting of medical quackery and unscientific approaches as anybody else. I've grown up as a card-carrying scientist, and I know the power of science to answer questions, and for many questions I don't know of anything better than scientific approaches to answer them.

  Dean Ornish

  Cards, Answers, Medical

  4 Copy quote

• There are two kinds of truth; the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery.

  Raymond Chandler

  Art, War, Science

  "Great Thought". "The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler" (1976) by Raymond Chandler, February 19, 1938.

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.

  William Hazlitt

  Thinking, Hype, Pieces

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1472, Delphi Classics

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Although millions of Americans purr with pastel delusions of Mohandas K. Gandhi, those who actually live in the scrawny crank's homeland struggle to throw off the painful aftermath of his quackery.

  Emmett Tyrrell

  Travel, Struggle, Home

  7 Copy quote

• Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, peccaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc.

  Henry Miller

  Sports, Suicide, Fashion

  Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.177, New Directions Publishing

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many of those in the medical fraternity instantly label treatments in the traditional, natural or holistic health fields as quackery. This word is even used to describe Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Indian Ayerveda, two medical systems which are far older than Western medicine and globally just as popular.

  James Morcan

  Two, Medicine, Chinese

  5 Copy quote

• The ...experts of the FDA have declared Laetrile to be worthless...quackery and fraud...These experts are the professional descendants of experts...confident that mental illness should be cured by drilling holes in the skull, the better to let the demons out. ...This is the Orwellian fashion in which the medical establishment throws its weight around.

  James J. Kilpatrick

  Fashion, Dark, Fda

  4 Copy quote