Paul Farmer Quotes

I'm one of six kids, and the eight of us lived for over a decade in either a bus or a boat. ~ Paul Farmer

The biggest public health challenge is rebuilding health systems. In other words, if you look at cholera or maternal mortality or tuberculosis in Haiti, they're major problems in Haiti, but the biggest problem is rebuilding systems. ~ Paul Farmer

Statistics or graphs,'" are not optimal to understand the 'experience of suffering.'" (qtd in Sutton 11) ~ Paul Farmer

The basis of our preferential option for the poor to say: I accompany them not because they are all good, or because I am all good, but because God is good. ~ Paul Farmer

60% of workers surveyed said if their employer took action to support the mental wellbeing of all staff, they would feel more loyal, motivated, committed and be likely to recommend their workplace as a good place to work. ~ Paul Farmer

Lean water and health care and school and food and tin roofs and cement floor, all of these things should constitute a set of basics that people must have as birthrights. ~ Paul Farmer

Haiti was founderd by a righteous revolution in 1804 and became the first black republic. It was the first country to break the chains of slavery, the first to force Emperor Napoleon to retreat, and the only to aid Simón Bolívar in his struggle to liberate the indigenous people and slaves of Latin America from their colonial oppressors. ~ Paul Farmer

With rare exceptions, all of your most important achievements on this planet will come from working with others - or, in a word, partnership. ~ Paul Farmer

The thing about rights is that in the end you can't prove what should be considered a right. ~ Paul Farmer

For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act. ~ Paul Farmer

If I am hungry, that is a material problem; if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem. ~ Paul Farmer

Statistics no longer frghten us. But pictures of the starving children of Biafra, of Haiti, or of India, with thousands sleeping in the streets, ought to. And this entirely apart from the horrors that befall the poor when they struggle to deliver themselves from their poverty: the tortures, the beheadings, the mothers who someow manage to reach a refuge, but carrying a dead child--a child who could not be nursed in flight and count not be buried after it had died. The catalogue of terrors is endless. ~ Paul Farmer

I can't think of a better model for Haiti rebuilding than Rwanda. ~ Paul Farmer

It is clear that the pharmaceutical industry is not, by any stretch of the imagination, doing enough to ensure that the poor have access to adequate medical care. ~ Paul Farmer

I mean we grew up in a TB bus and I became a TB doctor. ~ Paul Farmer

We've taken on the major health problems of the poorest - tuberculosis, maternal mortality, AIDS, malaria - in four countries. We've scored some victories in the sense that we've cured or treated thousands and changed the discourse about what is possible. ~ Paul Farmer

Human rights violations are nit accidents; they are not random in distribution or effect. Rights violations are, rather, symptoms of deeper pathologies of power and are linked intimately to the social conditions that so often determine who will suffer abuse and who will be shielded from harm. ~ Paul Farmer

Everybody should be interested in access to primary and secondary education for everybody. ~ Paul Farmer

In a world riven by inequity, medicine could be viewed as social justice work. ~ Paul Farmer

Civil and political rights are critical, but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water. ~ Paul Farmer

If you look at people who seek a lot of care in American cities for multiple illnesses, it's usually people with a number of overwhelming illnesses and a lot of social problems, like housing instability, unemployment, lack of insurance, lack of housing, or just bad housing. ~ Paul Farmer

Again, conventional Catholicism does not much appeal to me. ~ Paul Farmer

Anywhere you have extreme poverty and no national health insurance, no promise of health care regardless of social standing, that's where you see the sharp limitations of market-based health care. ~ Paul Farmer

We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it is not worth it. So we fight the long defeat. ~ Paul Farmer

It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country. ~ Paul Farmer

Since I do not believe that there should be different recommendations for people living in the Bronx and people living in Manhattan, I am uncomfortable making different recommendations for my patients in Boston and in Haiti. ~ Paul Farmer

The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world. ~ Paul Farmer

Ebola has not yet come into contact with modern medicine in West Africa. But when protocols for the provision of high quality supportive care are followed, the case fatality rate for Ebola may be lower than 20 percent. ~ Paul Farmer

If you look just at the decades after 1934, you know it's hard to point to really inspired and positive support from outside of Haiti, to Haiti, and much easier to point to either small-minded or downright mean-spirited policies. ~ Paul Farmer

You can't have public health without working with the public sector. You can't have public education without working with the public sector in education. ~ Paul Farmer

I never planned on doing a book about Paul Farmer or his organization. I met him in Haiti when I was on a magazine assignment. It's almost like his story sort of fell in my lap. ~ Tracy Kidder

I would say that, intellectually, Catholicism had no more impact on me than did social theory. ~ Paul Farmer

If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera ... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti ... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti. ~ Paul Farmer

One of the things we have to acknowledge is that if you look at Haiti, many billions of dollars have gone into development aid there that have not been effective. ~ Paul Farmer

At the same time, it is obvious that clinicians in Haiti are faced with different, and, in fact, greater, challenges when attempting to treat complications of HIV disease. ~ Paul Farmer

I've been impressed, over the last 15 years, with how often the somewhat conspiratorial comments of Haitian villagers have been proven to be correct when the historical record is probed carefully. ~ Paul Farmer

I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I'm not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win. I don't dislike victory ... You know, people from our background-like you, like most PIH-ers, like me-we're used to being on a victory team, and actually what we're really trying to do in PIH is to make common cause with the losers. Those are two very different things. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it's not worth it. So you fight the long defeat. ~ Tracy Kidder

I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti. ~ Paul Farmer

It is with this surety that we must stand with Haiti, a country whose spirit and people will never be broken, and work in solidarity toward the future the Haitian people deserve. ~ Paul Farmer

I recommend the same therapies for all humans with HIV. There is no reason to believe that physiologic responses to therapy will vary across lines of class, culture, race or nationality. ~ Paul Farmer

What the American public thinks is very important to the future of global health. Many people are moved by the idea that there is unnecessary suffering in the world, and we could do a lot to stop it. We have the technologies necessary to stop most of the suffering. ~ Paul Farmer

I critique market-based medicine not because I haven't seen its heights but because I've seen its depths. ~ Paul Farmer

The world is full of miserable places. One way of living comfortably is not to think about them or, when you do, to send money ~ Paul Farmer

I can't sleep. There's always somebody not getting treatment. I can't stand that. ~ Paul Farmer

I'm not an austere person. ~ Paul Farmer

I've been asked a lot for my view on American health care. Well, 'it would be a good idea,' to quote Gandhi. ~ Paul Farmer

Haiti is always talking about decentralization and nothing has been so obvious, perhaps a weakness, as the centralized nature of Haitian society as being revealed by the earthquake. I mean, they lost all these medical training programs because they didn't have them anywhere else. ~ Paul Farmer

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization. ~ Paul Farmer

There is nothing wrong with underlining personal agency, but there is something unfair about using personal responsibility as a basis for assigning blame while simultaneously denying those who are being blamed the opportunity to exert agency in their lives ~ Paul Farmer

I usually write about ordinary people and ordinary things, but Paul Farmer is the least ordinary person I've ever met ... He's the leader of a small group of people who hope to cure a sick world, and I hope my book can help in some small way. ~ Tracy Kidder

Some people talk about Haiti as being the graveyard of development projects. ~ Paul Farmer

One of the many sad ironies of African-American life is that every banal dysfunctional social gathering is called a "function. ~ Paul Beatty

But I don't know. Pee-wee just kind of popped out one day, pretty much fully fleshed-out and fully formed. ~ Paul Reubens

Pleasure must be found in study. ~ Paul Cezanne

We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent. ~ Paul Warburg

I was a really picky eater as a child. Because I was obsessed by Popeye, my mum and aunts would put my food in a can to represent spinach and we'd hum the Popeye tune and then I'd happily eat it. ~ Paul O'Grady

There is no moral reason for humanity to continue, if its ends are limited to itself. And this is how we must stop seeing ourselves. This is why we destroy each other. If we disregard the life around us, why should we not be equally disregarded? ~ Paul Xylinides

Nobody on this planet had a range of passing like Paul Scholes. Training every day was a pleasure just watching him. Unbelievable career. ~ Michael Owen

Following the pattern offered a kind of comfort, a quiet balance to working in the field during the day. The farmwork was coarse, exhausting, and largely a matter of faith - a farmer threw everything he had into the earth, but ultimately it wasn't up to him whether it rained or not. Sewing was different. Mabel knew if she was patient and meticulous, if she carefully followed the rules, that in the end when it was turned right-side out, it would be just how it was meant to be. A small miracle in itself, and one that life so rarely offered. ~ Eowyn Ivey

The most rewarding part about being a dad is just looking at children who didn't exist at some point. The first time you saw them, they were the size of a quarter, in a sonogram, and now they can pour orange juice and yell at each other. ~ Paul Reiser

At school there were some programs in music. I did take piano lessons, and we had a piano at home. I got very interested in that. ~ Paul Smith

Repentance is simply giving up to stop fighting against God and to stop attempting to gain your own salvation through your own works; to literally give up and fall upon Christ. That is salvation. ~ Paul Washer

So many believe that it is love that grows, but it is the knowing that grows and love simply expands to contain it. ~ Wm. Paul Young

The most clear-sided view of the darkest
possible situation is itself an act of optimism ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Ce fut le temps sous de clairs ciels,
(Vous en souvenez-vous, Madame?)
De baisers superficiels
Et des sentiments à fleur d'âme.

It was a time of cloudless skies,
(My lady, do you recall?)
Of kisses that brushed the surface
And feelings that shook the soul. ~ Paul Verlaine

The Federal Reserve and Congress have systematically taught the American people to trust the government and that caution in spending is harmful to the economy. ~ Ron Paul

We must reflect the light of Christ through lives of prayer and joyful service to others. ~ Pope John Paul II

It's not just about looking and copying, it's about feeling too ~ Paul Cezanne

In 'Deadliest Catch,' we have men in ships in rough seas catching crabs. With 'Whale Wars,' we have men and women from a dozen different nations going out to sea in rough weather to help save the whales. We also have icebergs, whales, penguins, and dramatic ship-to-ship confrontations. ~ Paul Watson

Each of them, all unknowing, fairly gives its due to each chance of life, to each germ of death within itself. ~ Paul Valery

I stomped down the hallway, twisted the latch on the front door, and yanked it open.
'Are you… "Ozzy Zig"?' said Guy Fawkes, in a thick Brummie accent.
'Who wants to know?' I said, folding my arms.
'Terry Butler,' he said. 'I saw your ad.'
That was exactly what I'd hoped he was going to say. Truth was, I'd been waiting a long time for this moment. I'd dreamed about it. I'd fantasised about it. I'd had conversations with myself on the shitter about it. One day, I thought, people might write newspaper articles about my ad in the window of Ringway Music, saying it was the turning point in the life of John Michael Osbourne, ex-car horn tuner.
'Tell me, Mr Osbourne,' I'd be asked by Robin Day on the BBC, 'when you were growing up in Aston, did you ever think that a simple advert in a music shop window would lead to you becoming the fifth member of the Beatles, and your sister Iris getting married to Paul McCartney?'
And I'd answer, 'Never in a million years, Robin, never in a million years.'

It was a f**king awesome ad. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another. ~ Paul Bowles

When you look at so much of what we all love, there's either soul-based to it, or it's the blues. It's really the beginnings of any kind of music. It really is; it all starts there. Because after that, it's music of the moment. ~ Paul Weller

It's not just that toil allows the appearance of spontaneity. It allows the actuality of spontaneity. ~ Paul Kane

I believe the essence of the Independence Day is missing. We celebrate it like any other holiday, which is wrong. We must celebrate our independence everyday, not just on one day of the year. ~ Arin Paul

Strive to be authentic all the time. That's sort of my philosophy on life, which applies to acting. ~ Paul Guilfoyle

She'd be lucky if she got out of this alive . . . and she'd never been lucky in her life. ~ Dorian Paul

I was trying to talk about where we are right now as a society, and talk about the fear we all live in, and certainly since 9-11, how it's affected us and the world. ~ Paul Haggis

The Cap and Trade Bill HR 2454 was voted on last Friday. Proponents claim this bill will help the environment, but what it really does is put another nail in the economy's coffin. ~ Ron Paul

In the heart's deepest place, where the burden of ego is dropped and the mystery of soul is penetrated, a man finds the consciousness there not different in any way from what all other men may find. The mutuality of the human race is thus revealed as existing only on a plane where its humanness is transcended. This is why all attempts to express it in political and economic terms, no less than the theosophic attempts to form a universal brotherhood, being premature, must be also artificial. This is why they failed. ~ Paul Brunton

Sometimes its not the strength but gentleness that cracks the hardest shells. ~ Richard Paul Evans

With a computer, you make your changes on the screen and then you print out a clean copy. With a typewriter, you can't get a clean manuscript unless you start again from scratch. It's an incredibly tedious process. ~ Paul Auster