“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)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If there is one operation for a disease, you know it works. If there are fifteen operations, you know that none of them…" by Sherwin B. Nuland?
Sherwin B. Nuland photo
Sherwin B. Nuland 7
American surgeon 1930–2014

Related quotes

Yehuda Ashlag photo
Henry Rollins photo
Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau photo
Michael Pollan photo

“Nutrition science is where surgery was in about 1650, you know, really interesting and promising, but would you want to have them operate on you yet? I don’t think so.”

Michael Pollan (1955) American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism

[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]

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

“In arithmetic the Arabs took one step backward. Though they were familiar with negative numbers and the rules for operating with them through the work of the Hindus, they rejected negative numbers.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 192.

“There is not one of you whose actions do not operate on the actions of others — operate, we mean, in the way of example.”

Henry Melvill (1798–1871) British academic

"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.

John McCain photo

“As you know, there are al-Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they're moving back into Iraq.”

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

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

Kim Stanley Robinson photo
Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon photo

“None know how to prize the Saviour, but such as are zealous in pious works for others.”

Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon (1707–1791) British countess

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 399.

Related topics