“It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation, that it forgets the most shameful happenings in the daily shame of events, and that it can hardly understand when individuals aim to destroy this infamy.”

The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them.

If popular medicine gave the people wisdom as well as knowledge, it would be the best protection for scientific and well-trained physicians.

There can be no scientific dispute with respect to faith, for science and faith exclude one another.

The body is a cell state in which every cell is a citizen. Disease is merely the conflict of the citizens of the state brought about by the action of external forces.

Science in itself’ is nothing, for it exists only in the human beings who are its bearers. ‘Science for its own sake’ usually means nothing more than science for the sake of the people who happen to be pursuing it.

Life itself is but the expression of a sum of phenomena, each of which follows the ordinary physical and chemical laws.

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

Between animal and human medicine, there is no dividing line-nor should there be.

Belief begins where science leaves off and ends where science begins.

Brevity in writing is the best insurance for its perusal.

The task of science is to stake out the limits of the knowable, and to center consciousness within them.

Imprisoned quacks are always replaced by new ones.

Only those who regard healing as the ultimate goal of their efforts can, therefore, be designated as physicians.

As long as vitalism and spiritualism are open questions so long will the gateway of science be open to mysticism.

My politics were those of prophylaxis, my opponents preferred those of palliation.

Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weigh life for life and see where the dead lie thicker, among the workers or among the privileged.

Change is not a four letter curse word I once believed it to be.

Try to make others happy, and don’t despair over all the evil in the world. Instead of cursing the dark, let us each light one small lamp.

Cherish that which is in you and shut out that which is without, for much knowledge is a curse.

For the curse of Cain, the curse of being an outcast and a wanderer over the face of the earth has been removed.

O marriage! marriage! what a curse is thine, Where hands alone consent and hearts abhor.

Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; And then the clock collected in the tower Its strength, and struck.

In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.

Nothing is worse and more hurtful than a happiness that comes too late. It can give no pleasure, yet it deprives you of that most precious of rights – the right to swear and curse at your fate!