"I have a philosophy, you do the best you can, and the things you can’t do anything about, don’t give any thought to them. … I feel I have to make a contribution. When I was doing surgery, I made it by operating. Now I try to make it by speaking about preventive medicine."

"It is not yet definitely proven that germs are essential elements in the production of any disease. It seems probable that they are only incidental and perhaps beneficial factors. However, this much is certain, whatever part they perform in the production of disease, germs alone can no more produce disease than a seed alone can produce a tree. Just as a seed must have fertile soil, moisture, warmth, air and sunlight, if it is to grow into a tree, so the germ, if it is to produce disease, must find certain essential conditions existing in the bodies of those it enters before it can do the slightest harm."

"The cannibal goes out and hunts, pursues and kills another man and proceeds to cook and eat him precisely as he would any other game. There is not a single argument nor a single fact that can be offered in favor of flesh eating that cannot be offered, with equal strength, in favor of cannibalism."

"It is always a much easier task to educate uneducated people than to re-educate the mis-educated."

"Let's not allow mental illness to be further stigmatized by events like the Newtown tragedy, nor to distract us from the solutions that are closer at hand. It's a lot faster, easier, and cheaper to reduce the number of assault weapons in circulation than it is to identify, treat and contain the very small subgroup of people with mental illness who present a homicide risk. We need to do both, of course, but gun safety will make the difference sooner."