“For a desperate disease a desperate cure.”
Michel De Montaigne book Essays
Book II, Ch. 3. The Custom of the Isle of Cea
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Remark (6 November 1605) as quoted in The Dictionary of National Biography Vol. 6 (1917); He is here invoking a version of a famous statement of Hippocrates, also translated as "Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases."
“For a desperate disease a desperate cure.”
Michel De Montaigne book Essays
Book II, Ch. 3. The Custom of the Isle of Cea
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker
Inside Information p. 4
The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)
“The remedy is worse than the disease.”
Francis Bacon book Essays
Of Seditions and Troubles
Essays (1625)
“There are some remedies worse than the disease.”
Publilio Siro Latin writer
Maxim 301
Sentences, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, a Roman Slave
“Desperate affairs require desperate measures.”
Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral
As quoted in The Book of Military Quotations (1992) edited by Peter G. Tsouras, p. 54
1800s
“Fear is the antidote to boredom: the remedy must be stronger than the disease.”
Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born
The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
“The mechanical danger must be overcome by a mechanical remedy”
Winston S. Churchill book The World Crisis
The World Crisis, 1915 : Chapter I (The Deadlock in the West), Churchill, Butterworth (1923), pp. 22-23.
Early career years (1898–1929)
Context: Mechanical not less than strategic conditions had combined to produce at this early period in the war a deadlock both on sea and land. The strongest fleet was paralysed in its offensive by the menace of the mine and the torpedo. The strongest army was arrested in its advance by the machine gun...... The mechanical danger must be overcome by a mechanical remedy..... Something must be discovered which would render ships immune from the torpedo, and make it unnecessary for soldiers to bare their breasts to the machine-gun hail.
Stobaeus Ancient Greek anthologist
24
Pythagorean Ethical Sentences
J.A. Hobson (1858–1940) English economist, social scientist and critic of imperialism
The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production (1906), Ch. XVII Civilisation and Industrial Development
Context: We now stand face to face with the main objection so often raised against all endeavours to remedy industrial and social diseases by the expansion of public control.... The strife, danger, and waste of industrial competition are necessary conditions to industrial vitality.<!--section 11, p. 417