Quacks Quotes

• Mankind has failed miserably in its effort to devise a rational system of government. [...] The art of government is the exclusive possession of quacks and frauds. It has been so since the earliest days, and it will probably remain so until the end of time.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Government, Effort

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.207, Knopf

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• Quacks pretend to cure other men's disorders, but fail to find a remedy for their own.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Men, Failing, Disorder

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• Treat persons who profess to be able to cure disease as you treat fortune tellers.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Disease, Able, Treats

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: Collected Articles, Lectures, Essays and Letters: Thoughts and Studies from the Renowned Dramaturge and Author of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Arms and The Man, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.418, e-artnow

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• If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck!

  Robin Cook

  Ducks, Looks, Ifs

  Robin Cook (2011). “Crisis”, p.63, Pan Macmillan

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• Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients he has never seen, is a quack.

  Samuel Hopkins Adams

  Medicine, Issues, Secret

  The Great American Fraud p. 39. Collier and Sons (1905)

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• Laws should be made, not against quacks but against superstition.

  Rudolf Virchow

  Science, Law, Physicians

  "An Introduction to the History of Medicine". Book by Fielding Hudson Garrison, 1913.

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• Most allopathic doctors think practitioners of alternative medicine are all quacks. They're not. Often they're sharp people who think differently about disease.

  Mehmet Oz

  Thinking, Doctors, Medicine

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• Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.

  C. S. Lewis

  Teacher, Morality, Introducing

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.77, HarperCollins UK

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• When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.

  Richard Cushing

  Nature, Ducks, Bird

  "Quotation Finder". Book by Everett Dirksen and Herbert V. Prochnow, p. 55, 1971.

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• If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.

  Douglas Adams

  Family, Integrity, Patriotic

  Douglas Adams (2016). “Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Box Set: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul”, p.209, Simon and Schuster

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• While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things, The fate of empires and the fall of kings; While quacks of State must each produce his plan, And even children lisp the Rights of Man; Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention, The Rights of Woman merit some attention.

  Robert Burns

  Kings, Children, Humorous

  Robert Burns, Robert Chambers (1838). “The Poetical Works of Robert Burns. To which are Now Added, Notes Illustrating Historical, Personal, and Local Allusions. [The Editor's Preface Signed: R. C., I.e. Robert Chambers.]”, p.85

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• 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

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• Graphology is another in a long list of quack substitutes for hard work. It is appealing to those who are impatient with such troublesome matters as research, evidence analysis, reasoning, logic, and hypothesis testing.

  Robert Todd Carroll

  Hard Work, Long, Research

  "Graphology". "The Skeptic's Dictionary" by Robert Todd Carroll, skepdic.com.

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• In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond.

  Warren Buffett

  Thinking, Errors, Skills

  1997 Chairman's Letter, www.berkshirehathaway.com. February 27, 1998.

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• They have taken the care and upbringing of children out of the hands of parents, where it belongs, and thrown it upon a gang of irresponsible and unintelligent quacks.

  H. L. Mencken

  Children, Freedom, Taken

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• The party should stand for a constantly wider diffusion of property. That is the greatest social and economic security that can come to free men. It makes men free.

  Jeffrey H Reiman

  Wisdom, Party, Men

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• Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses his remedies

  Francois Fenelon

  Use, Talkers, Remedy

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• Beautiful coquettes are quacks of love.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Beauty, Beautiful, Love Is

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• Gundar seemed to come to a decision. "Well, as my old mam used to say, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck." "Very wise," Halt said. "And what exactly do your mother's words of wisdom have to do with this situation?" Gundar shrugged. "It looks like a channel. It's the right place for a channel. If I were digging one, this is where I'd dig a channel. So. . ." "So it's probably the channel?" Selethen said. Gundar grinned at him. "Either that or it's a duck.

  John Flanagan

  Wise, Mother, Ducks

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• A quick cure is a quack cure.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Healing, Cures

  Margaret Thatcher, Iain Dale (1997). “As I said to Denis--: the Margaret Thatcher book of quotations”, Robson Book Ltd

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• 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

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• Quacks are the greatest liars in the world except their patients.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Liars, World, Patient

  Theodore Diller, Benjamin Franklin (1912). “Franklin's Contribution to Medicine: Being a Collection of Letters Written by Benjamin Franklin Bearing on the Science and Art of Medicine and Exhibiting His Social and Professional Intercourse with Various Physicians of Europe and America”

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• There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first is the quack who cures you; the second is the highly qualified person who doesn't.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Two, Firsts

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• Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Thinking, Doctors, Patient

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• Quack: A boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand. A vain boastful pretender to physick; An artful, tricking practitioner in physick.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Doe, Vain

  Samuel Johnson (1839). “Dictionary of the English Language ...”

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