
Source: The Economic Illusion (1984), Chapter 1, Equality and Efficiency, p. 14
Valedictory Address to medical graduates at Harvard University (10 March 1858), published in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal Vol. LVIII, No. 8 (25 March 1858), p. 158; this has also been paraphrased "Beware how you take away hope from another human being".
Context: You can never be too cautious in your prognosis, in the view of the great uncertainty of the course of any disease not long watched, and the many unexpected turns it may take.
I think I am not the first to utter the following caution : —
Beware how you take away hope from any human being. Nothing is clearer than that the merciful Creator intends to blind most people as they pass down into the dark valley. Without very good reasons, temporal or spiritual, we should not interfere with his kind arrangements. It is the height of cruelty and the extreme of impertinence to tell your patient he must die, except you are sure that he wishes to know it, or that there is some particular cause for his knowing it. I should be especially unwilling to tell a child that it could not recover; if the theologians think it necessary, let them take the responsibility. God leads it by the hand to the edge of the precipice in happy unconsciousness, and I would not open its eyes to what he wisely conceals.
Source: The Economic Illusion (1984), Chapter 1, Equality and Efficiency, p. 14
“The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.”
“I watch the beauty for as long as I can, then turn and face the rest of it.”
Source: I Am the Messenger
“You can never, never have too many books”
Page 60
The Third Policeman (1967)
A poem Ellen reads at the end of the first season of "Ellen". Longer version appears in her book, "My Point... And I Do Have One".
Everybody Loves You Now
Song lyrics, Cold Spring Harbor (1971)
“The disease may not be too difficult to live with. I thought you said it was terminal?”
“So I did. But then, everything is terminal, even health, even life itself. The only question is how long, and in what manner.”
I See a Man Sitting on a Chair, and the Chair Is Biting His Leg (p. 142)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)