“If there is one operation for a disease, you know it works. If there are fifteen operations, you know that none of them work.”
[The extraordinary power of ordinary people, TED Talks, February 2003, https://www.ted.com/talks/sherwin_nuland_on_hope] (2:40 of 12:31 in video)
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Sherwin B. Nuland 7
American surgeon 1930–2014Related quotes

Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1776) l’"Art de l’Épinglier" (The Art of the Pin-Maker). Introduction

[In Defense of Food: Author, Journalist Michael Pollan on Nutrition, Food Science and the American Diet, 2008-02-13, Democracy Now!, http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/13/in_defense_of_food_author_journalist, 2009-04-15]
Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 192.
"Partaking in Other Men's Sins", an address at St. Margaret's Church, Lothbury, England (12 June 1855), printed in Golden Lectures (1855); eventually part of this statement become paraphrased in several slight variations, and has usually been misattributed to Herman Melville, i.e.: "We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and along these fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects".
Context: There is not one of you whose actions do not operate on the actions of others — operate, we mean, in the way of example. He would be insignificant who could only destroy his own soul; but you are all, alas! of importance enough to help also to destroy the souls of others.... Ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibres connect you with your fellow-men, and along those fibres, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects.

The Hugh Hewitt Show. , http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/talkradio/transcripts/Transcript.aspx?ContentGuid=ae522a49-6c82-4791-a76e-44ebb718bf32
2000s, 2008

“None know how to prize the Saviour, but such as are zealous in pious works for others.”
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 399.