Nassim Nicholas Taleb Quotes

I've been to location shoots in Mexico before, and everyone ends up getting sick.

Dr. Jasper didn't care if they got their checkups, their medications.

The natives [Eskimos] were sick in almost every tent … and were in a very deplorable condition. …. The pity of it was that nothing was being done for their relief…. If nothing is done soon, the Eskimos will continue to become stupefied and utterly helpless and lie down to die.

There's clearly things you can do in your environment to try to prevent disease, and I want to know what those things are.

Do I feel confident about my health? I don't think that anybody ever should feel confident about their health if they are 72 years old, and getting ready to go in to the ring. If they are then they are probably some kind of an idiot and that is more than likely what I am.

Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey.

With epidemics, people have been standing on the shore, waiting for the gusher to hit the ocean. But to prevent epidemics, you have to look at the various little sources that feed into the river.

I contracted malaria in rural Mozambique. I was a youth ambassador for Australia. For a year after high school, you give positive speeches about Australia and as part of it I traveled to lots of different countries.

Medicine, which I wouldn't be without, has also been a force for... less good. For example, if you look at our mishandling of the immune system, using antibiotics in children and avoiding infection, we've certainly increased the risk of asthma.

The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.

Let him not throw urine or feces into the water, nor saliva, nor clothes defiled by impure substances, nor any other impurity, nor blood, nor poisonous things.

Health is a much higher priority than computers.

The doctor is often more to be feared than the disease.

Men, women, and children, who would be doomed to death in the savage state, have their lives prolonged by civilization; the sickly, whom the hardships of the savage struggle for existence would kill off, are carefully tended in hospitals, and saved by medical skill; the parents, whose thread of life would be cut short, are cherished on into prolonged old age; the feeble, who would be left to starve, are tenderly shielded from hardship, and life’s road is made the smoother for the lame; the average life is lengthened, and more and more thought is brought to bear on the causes of preventable disease; better drainage, better homes, better food, better clothing, all these, among the more comfortable classes, remove many of the natural checks to population.

The attempt to make a distinction between recovery and reform is a narrowly conceived effort to substitute the appearance of reality for reality itself. When a man is convalescing from illness, wisdom dictates not only cure of the symptoms but also removal of their cause.

Most people are healthy most of the time.

Without health life is not life; it is only a state of languor and suffering an image of death.

As a doctor who took care of patients for 25 years, I saw the problems with America's health care system every day.

I ain't afraid of germs, man. And I ain't afraid of getting sick.

I think that that's the wisest thing - to prevent illness before we try to cure something.

I'm recovering from a cold. I'm so full of penicillin that, if I sneeze, I'll cure someone.

I would love to visit India.

I got food poisoning in Venezuela, and it sucked!

To get a human through a life, lives of broken bones, knock-me-over-with-a-feather susceptibility to myriad viruses, and whatever else might befall someone will cost money.

Health is really important to me and my family. It's something that we value and that I strive for on a daily basis. MedImmune, the makers of Flumist Quadrivalent, knew about that and knew how important health is for me, so it was a no brainer for me to collaborate with them.