Tracy Kidder Quotes

“God gives everyone a gift and his gift is healing.”

“A doctor who didn’t understand local culture would probably mistake many patients’ complaints for bizarre superstitions.”

“And then of course it dawned on him that he knew plenty of Americans—he was one himself—who held apparently contradictory beliefs, such as faith in both medicine and prayer.”

“Some people said that medicine addresses only the symptoms of poverty.”

“I just think how much could have been done with twenty thousand dollars, you sound thoughtful, sensible, you know, reasonable, rational, someone you really want on your side. However, if you were to point out, But a young attending physician makes one hundred thousand dollars, not twenty, and that’s five times what it cost to try to save a boy’s life . . . Same world, same numbers, same figures, same currency.”

“One day in 1999, Farmer tried to use his credit card and was told he’d reached his limit.”

“In any case, he seemed to think I knew exactly what he meant, and I realized, with some irritation, that I didn’t dare say anything just then, for fear of disappointing him.”

“Of all the world’s errors, he seemed to feel, the most fundamental was the ‘erasing’ of people, the ‘hiding away’ of suffering.’”

“Giving people medicine for TB and not giving them food is like washing your hands and drying them in dirt.”

“To understand Russia, to understand Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Boston, identity politics, Sri Lanka, and Life Savers, you have to be on top of this hill.”

“The only non-compliant people are physicians. If the patient doesn’t get better, it’s your own fault. Fix it.”

“Clean water and health care and school and food and tin roofs and cement floors, all of these things should constitute a set of basics that people must have as birthrights.”

“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.”

“In his mind, he was fighting all poverty all the time, an endeavor full of difficulties and inevitable failures.”

“The only time that I hear talk of shrinking resources among people like us, among academics, is when we talk about things that have to do with poor people.”

“He said patients came first, prisoners second, and students third, but this didn’t leave out much of humanity.”

“Paul is a model of what should be done. He is not a model for how it should be done. Let’s celebrate him. Let’s make sure people are inspired by him. But we can’t say anybody should or could be just like him.”

“A doctor who knew nothing about local beliefs might end up at war with Voodoo priests, but a doctor-anthropologist who understood those beliefs could find ways to make Voodoo houngans his allies.”

“Paul has created technical solutions to help the rest of us get to decency, a road map to decency that we can all follow without trying to imitate him.”

“One can never work overtime for the poor.”