“Medicine, guarded too by preliminary impediments, and frightful medusa-heads of quackery, which deter many generous souls from entering, is of the half-articulate professions, and does not much invite the ardent kinds of ambition. The intellect required for medicine might be wholly human, and indeed should by all rules be,—the profession of the Human Healer being radically a sacred one and connected with the highest priesthoods, or rather being itself the outcome and acme of all priesthoods, and divinest conquests of intellect here below. As will appear one day, when men take off their old monastic and ecclesiastic spectacles, and look with eyes again! In essence the Physician's task is always heroic, eminently human: but in practice most unluckily at present we find it too become in good part beaverish,—yielding a money-result alone. And what of it is not beaverish,—does not that too go mainly to ingenious talking, publishing of yourself, ingratiating of yourself; a partly human exercise or waste of intellect, and, alas, a partly vulpine ditto;—making the once sacred… Human Healer, more impossible for us than ever!”

— Thomas Carlyle

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

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

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Thomas Carlyle 481

Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian… 1795–1881

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

Source: On Death and Dying (1969), Ch. 2

“Acting is not a profession of competing with other actors, but rather a vocation of sharing with fellow human beings.”

Marjo-Riikka Makela (1977) Finnish actress

2009 speech at the opening ceremony for Chekhov Studio International Los Angeles ( online http://chekhovstudio.com/2013/07/inspiring-quotes/ and books.google.com http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Spirit_of_Creation_Discipline_and_At.html?id=jqMInoDQoxMC)

“A discipline, a region of the world of thought, should seek to know itself. Like an individual human being, it has received from its origins a stamp of character, a native mode of response to the situations confronting it. Right responses, 'responsibility', will require of the profession as of the individual an insight into the powers and defects of the tool which history has bequeathed to it.”

G. L. S. Shackle (1903–1992) British economist

Source: Epistemics and Economics. (1972), p. 24

“I can't say that I love it with a fierce passion — indeed as a profession it's rather disappointing since it is not a profession at all, but rather a business service station and repair shop.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

On being a lawyer, as quoted by Claire Birge in The Stevensons : A Biography of an American Family (1997) by Jean H. Baker, p. 262

“Doctors are men who prescribe medicine of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, for human beings of which they know nothing.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Les médecins administrent des médicaments dont ils savent très peu, à des malades dont ils savent moins, pour guérir des maladies dont ils ne savent rien.
This attribution to Voltaire appears in Strauss' Familiar Medical Quotations (1968), p. 394, and in publications as early as 1956 http://books.google.pt/books?id=lCtCAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Doctors+are+men+who+prescribe+medicine+of%22&dq=%22Doctors+are+men+who+prescribe+medicine+of%22&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=mbnWUsvDIfTB7Aaw_YD4Dw&redir_esc=y; the quotation in French does not, however, appear to be original, and is probably a relatively modern invention, only quoted in recent (21st century) published works, which attribute it to "Voltaire" without citing any source.
Attributed

“Human nature is the same in all professions.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Source: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

“[Medical] science was indeed powerful, but its self-understanding left much to be desired. It knew the human parts in ever-finer detail, but it concerned itself little with the human whole. … The art of healing does not inquire into what health is, or how to get and keep it: The word "health" does not occur in the index of the leading textbooks of medicine. To judge from the way we measure medical progress, largely in terms of mortality statistics and defeats of deadly diseases, one gets the unsettling impression that the tacit goal of medicine is not health but rather bodily immortality, with every death today regarded as a tragedy that future medical research will prevent.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Looking for an Honest Man (2009)

“Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

This attribution to Voltaire appears in Strauss' Familiar Medical Quotations (1968), p. 394, and in publications as early as 1956 http://books.google.pt/books?id=lCtCAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Doctors+are+men+who+prescribe+medicine+of%22&dq=%22Doctors+are+men+who+prescribe+medicine+of%22&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=mbnWUsvDIfTB7Aaw_YD4Dw&redir_esc=y; the quotation in French does not, however, appear to be original, and is probably a relatively modern invention, only quoted in recent (21st century) published works, which attribute it to "Voltaire" without citing any source.
Original: (fr) Les médecins administrent des médicaments dont ils savent très peu, à des malades dont ils savent moins, pour guérir des maladies dont ils ne savent rien.

“It’s clear that male human beings should never have been left in control of the world all these centuries. Many of you are wonderful beyond belief, but too many others will always be bloody lunatics.
Your sex is simply built that way. Its better side gave us power and light, science and reason, medicine and philosophy. Meanwhile the dark half spent its time dreaming up unimaginable hells and putting them into practice.”

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 9 (p. 225)

“The concept of need is often looked upon rather unfavorably by economists, in contrast with the concept of demand. Both, however, have their own strengths and weaknesses. The need concept is criticized as being too mechanical, as denying the autonomy and individuality of the human person, and as implying that the human being is a machine which "needs" fuel in the shape of food, engine dope in the shape of medicine, and spare parts provided by the surgeon.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1967) "The Concept of Need for Health Services" in: The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Vol. 44, No. 4, Part 2, pp. 202
1960s

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Thomas Carlyle 481

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