Quacks Quotes - Page 2

• Beautiful coquettes are quacks of love.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Beauty, Beautiful, Love Is

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• Imprisoned quacks are always replaced by new ones.

  Rudolf Virchow

  Physicians, Replaced

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• "Lambe them, lads! lambe them!" a cant phrase of the time derived from the fate of Dr. Lambe, an astrologer and quack, who was knocked on the head by the rabble in Charles the First's time.

  Walter Scott

  Time, Fate, Drs

  Walter Scott (2016). “Peveril of the Peak, Complete: Scott's Works Vol.26”, p.453, VM eBooks

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• In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our ... nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists, and quacks. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive skepticism of adult science.

  Richard Dawkins

  Skulls, Childhood, Parent

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• In medicine, it has long been recognized that even a quack remedy that is harmless in itself can be fatal when it substitutes for an effective medication or treatment. The time is overdue for that same recognition to apply to politics.

  Thomas Sowell

  Medicine, Long, Political

  "Old rhetoric in new times" by Thomas Sowell, townhall.com. August 26, 2003.

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• Dishonesty is the raw material not of quacks only, but also in great part dupes.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Lying, Raw Materials, Dupes

  Thomas Carlyle, Chris Vanden Bossche (2002). “Historical Essays”, p.43, Univ of California Press

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• An optimist is someone who figures that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's the bluebird of happiness.

  Robert Breault

  Ducks, Optimism, Figures

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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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• The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The minute it begins to out-whoop them it forfeits its character and becomes ridiculous.

  H. L. Mencken

  Character, Democracy, Ridiculous

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Diary of H. L. Mencken”, p.281, Vintage

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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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• He who attempts to make others believe in means which he himself despises is a puffer; he who makes use of more means than he knows to be necessary is a quack; and he who ascribes to those means a greater efficacy than his own experience warrants is an impostor.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Believe, Mean, Deceit

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• The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

  Keith Olbermann

  Men, Politics, Shade

  Keith Olbermann (2008). “Truth and Consequences: Special Comments on the Bush Administration's War on American Values”, p.11, Random House

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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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• The prophet and the quack are alike admired for a generation, and admired for the wrong reasons.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Generations, Reason, Prophet

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• The empiric easily degenerates into the quack. He does not know where his knowledge begins or leaves off, and so when he gets beyond routine conditions he begins to pretend-to make claims for which there is no justification, and to trust to luck and to ability to impose upon others-to "bluff."

  John Dewey

  Luck, Degenerates, Doe

  John Dewey (2015). “Democracy and Education: Top American Authors”, p.198, 谷月社

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• Look at that mallard as he floats on the lake; see his elevated head glittering with emerald green, his amber eyes glancing in the light! Even at this distance, he has marked you, and suspects that you bear no goodwill towards him, for he sees that you have a gun, and he has many a time been frightened by its report, or that of some other. The wary bird draws his feet under his body, springs upon then, opens his wings, and with loud quacks bids you farewell.

  John James Audubon

  Distance, Spring, Farewell

  John James Audubon (1835). “Ornithological Biography: Or An Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States of America; Accompanied by Descriptions of the Objects Represented in the Work Entitled The Birds of America, and Interspersed with Delineations of American Scenery and Manners. 5 Vol. Il. Q.”, p.165

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• The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don't master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Engineering, Long, People

  "Answers to questions from students of Software Engineering" by Edsger Dijkstra, www.cs.utexas.edu. November 28, 2000.

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• The strong appearance of design [in nature] allows a disarmingly simple argument: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, then, absent compelling evidence to the contrary, we have warrant to conclude it's a duck. Design should not be overlooked simply because it's so obvious.

  Michael Behe

  Strong, Simple, Ducks

  "Design for Living" by Michael Behe, www.nytimes.com. February 7, 2005.

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• 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

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• Let us leave the cure of public evils to those quacks, the statesmen.

  Honore de Balzac

  Evil, Cures, Statesmen

  Honore de Balzac “A Distinguished Provincial at Paris”, Library of Alexandria

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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 free men. We want a nation of proprietors, not a state of collectivists. That is attained by creating a national wealth and income, not by destroying it. The income and estate taxes create an orderly movement to diffuse swollen fortunes more effectively than all the quacks.

  Herbert Hoover

  Wisdom, Party, Men

  Herbert Hoover (1938). “Addresses upon the American road”

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• One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ' Socialism ' and ' Communism ' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

  George Orwell

  Sex, Fruit Juice, Feminist

  George Orwell (2001). “Orwell's England: the Road to Wigan Pier in the context of essays, reviews, letters and poems selected from the Complete works of George Orwell”, ePenguin

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• I have never been converted to or even had much interest in spiritualism, occultism, Swedenborgianism or any particular religion. And I never, except occasionally for a laugh, visit the quacks who call themselves psychics.

  Dick Cavett

  Psychics, Laughing, Interest

  Dick Cavett (2010). “Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets”, p.16, Macmillan

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• Penicillin sat on a shelf for ten years while I was called a quack.

  Alexander Fleming

  Dark, Years, Age

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• The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans and empty quacks.

  William James

  War, Party, Writing

  "Essays in Religion and Morality".

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