Quotes about health
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Ellen Page photo
Tryon Edwards photo

“Age does not depend upon years, but upon temperament and health. Some men are born old, and some never grow so.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, pp. 11–12.

Gary Johnson photo

“I may have vetoed more legislation than the other forty-nine governors in the country combined. And it wasn't just saying, "no," it was really looking at what we were spending our money on and what we were getting for the money we were spending. And I really do believe in smaller government, I really believe that there are consequences of legislation that gets passed and maybe it isn't in our best interest to pass all the legislation that we pass, that it layers bureaucracy on transactions that aren't made any safer by you and I, but that just end up making it so much more cumbersome, so much more burdensome, and ends up adding a lot of money as opposed to the notion of liberty and freedom and the personal responsibility that goes along with that… My entire life I watched government spend more money than what it takes in and I just always thought that there would be a day of reckoning with regard to that spending, and I think that day of reckoning is here, that it's right now, and it needs to be fixed… But what I said then and I'll say now, I think that Republicans would gain a lot of credibility in this argument if Republicans would offer up a repeal of the Prescription Health Care Benefit that they passed when they had control of both houses of Congress and ran up record deficits.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Announcement of Intention to Run for the Republican Nomination for President of the United States
YouTube
2011-04-21
http://youtu.be/lBlA7yEiiZs
2012-02-24
Sound Government

Anthony Weiner photo
Elaine Paige photo
Luther Burbank photo
Thomas Piketty photo
Bernie Sanders photo
Nicholas Barr photo

“Efficiency advantages and disadvantages are more finely balanced than with health care - one person's 'sign of a civilized society' is another's 'society is going to the dogs.”

Nicholas Barr (1943) British economist

Source: Economics Of The Welfare State (Fourth Edition), Chapter 13, School Education, p. 309

John McCain photo

“The vice president has two duties. One is to inquire daily as to the health of the president, and the other is to attend the funerals of third world dictators. And neither of those do I find an enjoyable exercise.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

In response to question by Tim Russert on how he would respond if George W. Bush asked him to be his vice presidential running mate in 2000. Interview on Meet the Press. Originally aired 3 March 2000. Aired again as a clip 15 June 2008 ( transcript http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25171251/page/3/).
2000s

Michel De Montaigne photo
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo

“My former health minister, Kamran Bagheri Lankarani, is like a peach. I love to eat him.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/world-article.php?yyyy=2009&mm=08&dd=24&nav_id=61346
2009

Ilana Mercer photo

“Adding an overarching tier of tyrants—the EU—to European governments has benefited Europeans as a second hangman enhances the health of a condemned man.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Adieu to the Evil EU" http://www.antiwar.com/mercer/?articleid=6272/ Antiwar.com, June 10, 2005.
2000s, 2005
Variant: Europeans have come to realize that adding an overarching tier of tyrants—the EU—to their own government has benefited them as a second hangman enhances the health of a condemned man.

Michael Savage photo

“It's a shell game… They "give" you "free" health-care, then enslave you with a tax burden so heavy you go into cardiac arrest from the load.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

Source: The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Churches, Schools, and Military (2004), p. 55

Niccolo Machiavelli photo
Margaret Chan photo
John Barrymore photo

“Don't worry. For a man who has been dead for fifteen years I am in remarkable health. Love. Mr. Barrymore.”

John Barrymore (1882–1942) American actor of stage, screen and radio

Telegram sent to Garson Kanin regarding Barrymore's rumored stroke following his collapse prior to a 1939 performance of Catherine Turney's My Dear Children at the Selwyn Theater in Chicago, as quoted in Kanin's Hollywood (1974), p. 45

Jeremy Rifkin photo
Al Gore photo
Šantidéva photo

“As long as diseases afflict living beings
May I be the doctor, the medicine
And also the nurse
Who restores them to health.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Bodhicaryavatara

George Holyoake photo

“This was the angerless philosophy of Owen, which inspired him with a forbearance that never failed him, and gave him that regnant manner which charmed all who met him. We shall see what his doctrine of environment has done for society, if we notice what it began to do in his day, and what it has done since.
Men perished by battle, by tempest, by pestilence, Faith might comfort, but it did not save them. In every town, nests of pestilence co-existed with the churches, who were concerned alone with worship. Disease was unchecked by devotion. Then Owen asked, "Might not safety come by improved material condition?" As the prayer of hope brought no reply, as the scream of agony, if heard, was unanswered, as the priest, with the holiest intent, brought no deliverance, it seemed prudent to try the philosopher and the physician.
Then Corn Laws were repealed, because prayers fed nobody. Then parks were multiplied because fresh air was found to be a condition of health. Alleys and courts, were begun to be abolished-since deadly diseases were bred there. Streets were widened, that towns might be ventilated. Hours of labour were shortened, since exhaustion means liability to epidemic contagion. Recreation was encouraged, as change and rest mean life and strength. Temperance — thought of as self-denial — was found to be a necessity, as excess of any kind in diet, or labour, or pleasure means premature death. Those who took dwellings began to look, not only to drainage and ventilation, but to the ways of their near neighbours, as the most pious family may poison the air you breathe unless they have sanitary habits.”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

Memorial dedication (1902)

Francis Escudero photo

“Better than big business is clean business.
To an honest man the most satisfactory reflection after he has amassed his dollars is not that they are many but that they are all clean.
What constitutes clean business? The answer is obvious enough, but the obvious needs restating every once in a while.
"A clean profit is one that has also made a profit for the other fellow."
This is fundamental moral axiom in business. Any gain that arises from another's loss is dirty.
Any business whose prosperity depends upon damage to any other business is a menace to the general welfare.
That is why gambling, direct or indirect, is criminal, why lotteries are prohibited by law, and why even gambling slot-machine devices are not tolerated in civilized countries. When a farmer sells a housekeeper a barrel of apples, when a milkman sells her a quart of milk, or the butcher a pound of steak, or the dry-goods man a yard of muslin, the housekeeper is benefited quite as much as those who get her money.
That is the type of honest, clean business, the kind that helps everybody and hurts nobody. Of course as business becomes more complicated it grows more difficult to tell so clearly whether both sides are equally prospered. No principle is automatic. It requires sense, judgment, and conscience to keep clean; but it can be done, nevertheless, if one is determined to maintain his self-respect. A man that makes a habit, every deal he goes into, of asking himself, "What is there in it for the other fellow?" and who refuses to enter into any transaction where his own gain will mean disaster to some one else, cannot go for wrong.
And no matter how many memorial churches he builds, nor how much he gives to charity, or how many monuments he erects in his native town, any man who has made his money by ruining other people is not entitled to be called decent. A factory where many workmen are given employment, paid living wages, and where health and life are conserved, is doing more real good in the world than ten eleemosynary institutions.
The only really charitable dollar is the clean dollar. And the nasty dollar, wrung from wronged workmen or gotten by unfair methods from competitors, is never nastier than when it pretends to serve the Lord by being given to the poor, to education, or to religion. In the long run all such dollars tend to corrupt and disrupt society.
Of all vile money, that which is the most unspeakably vile is the money spent for war; for war is conceived by the blundering ignorance and selfishness of rulers, is fanned to flame by the very lowest passions of humanity, and prostitutes the highest ideal of men; zeal for the common good; to the business of killing human beings and destroying the results of their collective work.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), Clean Business

Jeffrey D. Sachs photo
Joe Barton photo
Chen Shih-chung photo

“It's every country's responsibility to cooperate with one another for the sake of their citizens' health, and I believe that it is the international society's responsibility to make sure that Taiwan is not excluded from the global health system.”

Chen Shih-chung politician

Chen Shih-chung (2017) cited in " Taiwan’s minister of health to attend bilateral meetings during WHA http://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3169404" on Taiwan News, 22 May 2017

Alex Salmond photo
Nelson Mandela photo

“I have always believed that exercise is the key not only to physical health but to peace of mind.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

Alfred de Zayas photo

“I am concerned about the secrecy surrounding negotiations for trade treaties, which have excluded key stakeholder groups from the process, including labour unions, environmental protection groups, food-safety movements and health professionals.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

U.N. expert says secret trade deals threaten human rights http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/23/trade-rights-idUSL5N0XK54G20150423?feedType=RSS&feedName=everything&virtualBrandChannel=11563.
2015

“Boybuilding is a gift, it is an honor, and it is a privilege, although I'm hanging up my belt, I still want to be an ambassador for the sport and health and fitness.”

Iris Kyle (1974) American bodybuilder

In "IRIS KYLE WINS AGAIN" at bodybuilding.com (Sep 24, 2014).
Sourced quotes, 2014

Margaret Chan photo
Joseph Strutt photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“The imagination is not a talent of some men but is the health of every man.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Poetry and Imagination
1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Books, Letters and Social Aims http://www.rwe.org/comm/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=5&id=74&Itemid=149 (1876)

George William Curtis photo

“And are there no laws of moral health? Can they be outraged and the penalty not paid? Let a man turn out of the bright and bustling Broadway, out of the mad revel of riches and the restless, unripe luxury of ignorant men whom sudden wealth has disordered like exhilarating gas; let him penetrate through sickening stench the lairs of typhus, the dens of small-pox, the coverts of all loathsome disease and unimaginable crimes; let him see the dull, starved, stolid, lowering faces, the human heaps of utter woe, and, like Jefferson in contemplating slavery a hundred years ago in Virginia, he will murmur with bowed head, 'I tremble for this city when I remember that God is just'. Is his justice any surer in a tenement-house than it is in a State? Filth in the city is pestilence. Injustice in the State is civil war. 'Gentlemen', said George Mason, a friend and neighbor of Jefferson's, in the Convention that framed the Constitution, 'by an inscrutable chain of causes and effects Providence punishes national sins by national calamities'. 'Oh no. gentlemen, it is no such thing', replied John Rutledge of South Carolina. 'Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this question. Interest is the governing principle with nations'. The descendants of John Rutledge live in the State which quivers still with the terrible tread of Sherman and his men. Let them answer! Oh seaports and factories, silent and ruined! Oh barns and granaries, heaps of blackened desolation! Oh wasted homes, bleeding hearts, starving mouths! Oh land consumed in the fire your own hands kindled! Was not John Rutledge wrong, was not George Mason right, that prosperity which is only money in the purse, and not justice or fair play, is the most cruel traitor, and will cheat you of your heart's blood in the end?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Francis Place photo
Julius Streicher photo

“The Roman historian Tacitus once said, that the health and the disease of a state can be measured in the number of its laws. If we Germans nowadays look at the huge number of laws, we have to say, that it's not health, but death that we're approaching. … It is strange that it is Social Democracy of all movements, which in the old state complained about exceptions, that now issues exception laws itself. These exception-laws are means of force and are created in the parliaments with the help of supranational financial powers. …
In the old state an interest rate of more than 6 percent was deemed usury. Today this usury is legalized. It was YOU, the men of the left -- who always pretend to fight against capitalism and exploitation -- who accomplished this. It will be your downfall!”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Der römische Geschichtsschreiber Tacitus hat einmal gesagt, dass man die Gesundheit und die Krankheit eines Staates nach der Zahl seiner Gesetze ermessen könne. Wenn wir Deutsche heute die große Zahl unserer Gesetze betrachten, dann müssen wir sagen, dass wir nicht der Gesundheit, sondern dem Tode entgegengehen. … Es ist sonderbar, dass ausgerechnet die Sozialdemokratie, die sich im alten Staat immer über Ausnahmen aufgeregt hat, jetzt selbst Ausnahmegesetze erläßt! Diese Ausnahmegesetze sind Zwangsmittel und werden in den Parlamenten mit Hilfe überstaatlicher Finanzmächte geschaffen. …
Im alten Staate galt ein Zinsfuß von mehr als 6 Prozent als Wucher. Heute ist dieser Wucher gesetzlich genehmigt. Das haben SIE, meine Herren von der Linken, die Sie immer vorgeben, Kapitalismus und Ausbeutung zu bekämpfen, fertiggebracht! Daran werden Sie zugrunde gehen!
04/20/1926, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

Jeremy Rifkin photo

“Diverting attention from the way in which certain beliefs, desires, attitudes, or values are the result of particular power relations, then, can be a sophisticated way of contributing to the maintenance of an ideology, and one that will be relatively immune to normal forms of empirical refutation. If I claim (falsely) that all human societies, or all human societies at a certain level of economic development, have a free market in health services, that is a claim that can be demonstrated to be false. On the other hand, if I focus your attention in a very intense way on the various different tariffs and pricing schema that doctors or hospitals or drug companies impose for their products and services, and if I become morally outraged by “excessive” costs some drug companies charge, discussing at great length the relative rates of profit in different sectors of the economy, and pressing the moral claims of patients, it is not at all obvious that anything I say may be straightforwardly “false”; after all, who knows what “excessive” means? However, by proceeding in this way I might well focus your attention on narrow issues of “just” pricing, turning it away from more pressing issues about the acceptance in some societies of the very existence of a free market for drugs and medical services. One can even argue that the more outraged I become about the excessive price, the more I obscure the underlying issue. One way, then, in which a political philosophy can be ideological is by presenting a relatively marginal issue as if it were central and essential.”

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 54.

“mind is full of energy, so health of the mind matters first”

The lecture in Ashland, Oregon (8th of July 2005)

John McCain photo

“Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

In an article in Contingencies magazine, September/October, 2008 http://www.contingencies.org/septoct08/mccain.pdf
2000s, 2008

Maimónides photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo
Brigham Young photo
Hillary Clinton photo
John Green photo
James Thomson (poet) photo
Mark Ames photo
George Herbert photo

“897. There are more physitians in health then drunkards.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“the sunlight will become the medicine, first for the health of the eye and then for the health of the mind”

The lecture in Ashland, Oregon (8th of July 2005)

Rush Limbaugh photo
Sathya Sai Baba photo

“As a matter of fact, there is no trace of ill-health in Me. I am always healthy. Not only today, till 96 years I will be like this.”

Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru

05 Oct. 2003, Prasanthi Nilayam in Sathya Sai Speaks, volume 36 chapter 14, discourse title "Give up Dehabhimana develop Atmabhiman"

George Gordon Byron photo

“My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is on the sea;
But, before I go, Tom Moore.
Here's a double health to thee!”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

To Thomas Moore http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-TomMoore.htm, st. 1 (1817).

Pope Benedict XVI photo
Stephen Harper photo

“we do not offer them a better health-care plan than the ordinary Canadian can receive. I think that’s something that new and old stock Canadians can agree with”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

17 September 2015 according to 18 September 2015 article by Peter Edwards mentioning "the phrase “old stock Canadians” used by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Thursday’s leadership debate." https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/09/18/old-stock-canadians-phrase-chills-prof-ignites-twitter.html
2015

Simon Soloveychik photo
Margaret Thatcher photo

“The principle that adequate health care should be provided for all, regardless of ability to pay, must be the foundation of any arrangements for financing the Health Service.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Prime Minister's Questions (1 December 1981) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104755
First term as Prime Minister

Adolf Hitler photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Prudence

Roger Ebert photo
William Paley photo
Michael Marmot photo
Theresa May photo
Max Scheler photo
Shankar Dayal Sharma photo
Ron Paul photo
Alexander Pope photo

“What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

George Dennison Prentice http://www.picturehistory.com/product/id/4820, in Prenticeana (1860)
Misattributed

Mitt Romney photo
Jean de La Bruyère photo

“Let us not envy a certain class of men for their enormous riches; they have paid such an equivalent for them that it would not suit us; they have given for them their peace of mind, their health, their honour, and their conscience; this is rather too dear, and there is nothing to be made out of such a bargain.”

N'envions point à une sorte de gens leurs grandes richesses; ils les ont à titre onéreux, et qui ne nous accommoderait point: ils ont mis leur repos, leur santé, leur honneur et leur conscience pour les avoir; cela est trop cher, et il n'y a rien à gagner à un tel marché.
Aphorism 13
Les Caractères (1688), Des biens de fortune

Jerome K. Jerome photo

“We drink one another's health and spoil our own.”

"On Eating and Drinking".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Cora L. V. Scott photo
Michael Prysner photo
Roy Jenkins photo

“Undoubtedly, looking back, we nearly all allowed ourselves, for decades, to be frozen into rates of personal taxation which were ludicrously high… That frozen framework has been decisively cracked, not only by the prescripts of Chancellors but in the expectations of the people. It is one of the things for which the Government deserve credit… However, even beneficial revolutions have a strong tendency to breed their own excesses. There is now a real danger of the conventional wisdom about taxation, public expenditure and the duty of the state in relation to the distribution of rewards, swinging much too far in the opposite direction… I put in a strong reservation against the view, gaining ground a little dangerously I think, that the supreme duty of statesmanship is to reduce taxation. There is certainly no virtue in taxation for its own sake… We have been building up, not dissipating, overseas assets. The question is whether, while so doing, we have been neglecting our investment at home and particularly that in the public services. There is no doubt, in my mind at any rate, about the ability of a low taxation market-oriented economy to produce consumer goods, even if an awful lot of them are imported, far better than any planned economy that ever was or probably ever can be invented. However, I am not convinced that such a society and economy, particularly if it is not infused with the civic optimism which was in many ways the true epitome of Victorian values, is equally good at protecting the environment or safeguarding health, schools, universities or Britain's scientific future. And if we are asked which is under greater threat in Britain today—the supply of consumer goods or the nexus of civilised public services—it would be difficult not to answer that it was the latter.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1988/feb/24/opportunity-and-income-social-disparities in the House of Lords (24 February 1988).

Jason Mraz photo
Thomas Hobbes photo
Francis Escudero photo

“• Increase of P500 million for the Quick Response Fund of the Department of Health;”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Michele Simon photo
Nicholas Barr photo
Scott Jurek photo
Marco Rubio photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Seba Johnson photo
Tryon Edwards photo

“Temperance is to the body what religion is to the soul, the foundation and source of health and strength and peace.”

Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) American theologian

Source: A Dictionary of Thoughts, 1891, p. 567.

Sandra Fluke photo

“It's an attempt to silence women. That's really what it's about, if we're called these names, then we'll go away and we won't demand the health care we deserve and we need and I think women have proven those folks wrong.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

CBS News interview with Sandra Fluke. cited in — [March 2, 2012, March 8, 2012, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57389769-503544/sandra-fluke-rush-limbaugh-wants-to-silence-women/, CBS News, CBS, Sandra Fluke: Rush Limbaugh wants "to silence women", Brian, Montopoli]
Media interviews

Muhammad photo

“Ibn 'Abbas said that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "There are two blessings which deceive many people: health and free time."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 1, hadith number 97
Sunni Hadith

Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Edward Heath photo
Wilson Chandler photo

“I was pretty health-conscious even before going vegan. The transition came after I watched '. After that I went pescatarian for a while, but I went deeper and deeper with research. … Part of why I stopped eating meat is because the more acid is in your body, the harder it is for muscles to recover.”

Wilson Chandler (1987) American basketball player

"The Real-Life Diet of Wilson Chandler, Nuggets Forward and Vegan" https://www.gq.com/story/wilson-chandler-real-life-vegan-diet, interview with GQ (December 6, 2016).

David Smith (rower) photo
Roy A. Childs, Jr. photo
Thomas Brooks photo
Saul D. Alinsky photo