A surgeon should give as little pain as possible while he is treating the patient, and no pain at all when he charges his fee.

Above all things, good policy is to be used that the treasure and moneys in a state be not gathered into few hands. For otherwise a state may have a great stock, and yet starve. And money is like muck, not good except it be spread.

Bankers regard research as most dangerous a thing that makes banking hazardous due to the rapid changes it brings about in industry.

Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought, Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught, The wise, for cure, on exercise depend; God never made his work for man to mend.

But if capitalism had built up science as a productive force, the very character of the new mode of production was serving to make capitalism itself unnecessary.

But there is another alchemy, operative and practical, which teaches how to make the noble metals and colours and many other things better and more abundantly by art than they are made in nature. And science of this kind is greater than all those preceding because it produces greater utilities. For not only can it yield wealth and very many other things for the public welfare, but it also teaches how to discover such things as are capable of prolonging human life for much longer periods than can be accomplished by nature ... Therefore this science has special utilities of that nature, while nevertheless it confirms theoretical alchemy through its works.

But, because my private lectures and domestic pupils are a great hinderance and intteruption of my studies, I wish to live entirely exempt from the former, and in great measure from the latter. … in short, I should wish to gain my bread from my writings.
Reply upon being offered a professorship.

Capitalism, though it may not always give the scientific worker a living wage, will always protect him, as being one of the geese which produce golden eggs for its table.

Doctors coin money when they do procedures—family practice doesn't have any procedures. A urologist has cystoscopies, a gastroenterologist has gastroscopies, a dermatologist has biopsies. They can do three or four of those and make five or six hundred dollars in a single day. We get nothing for the use of our time to understand the lives of our patients. Technology is rewarded in medicine, it seems to me, and not thinking.

Here lies one who for medicines would not give
A little gold, and so his life he lost;
I fancy now he'd wish again to live,
Could he but guess how much his funeral cost.

Here's good advice for practice: go into partnership with nature; she does more than half the work and asks none of the fee.

I cannot afford to waste my time making money.
A reply to an offer of a lecture tour.

I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know what those doctors were wearing masks for.

I spend money on war because it is necessary, but to spend it on science, that is pleasant to me. This object costs no tears; it is an honour to humanity,

If a physician make a large incision with an operating knife and cure it, or if he open a tumor (over the eye) with an operating knife, and saves the eye, he shall receive ten shekels in money. …
If a physician make a large incision with an operating knife, and kill him, or open a tumor with an operating knife, and cut out the eye, his hands shall be cut off. ...
If a physician heal the broken bone or diseased soft part of a man, the patient shall pay the physician five shekels in money.
[The Code of Hammurabi (a king of ancient Babylon), the earliest well-preserved ancient law code, circa 1760 B.C.]

If you are too smart to pay the doctor, you had better be too smart to get ill.

In the end, poverty, putridity and pestilence; work, wealth and worry; health, happiness and hell, all simmer down into village problems.

In the midst of your illness you will promise a goat, but when you have recovered, a chicken will seem sufficient.

Making out an income tax is a lesson in mathematics: addition, division, multiplication and extraction.

Mathematics is strange: many make thousands but not many make millions.

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education... no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

People without independence have no business to meddle with science. It should never be linked with lucre.

Perfect health is above gold; a sound body before riches.

Poverty is a virtue greatly exaggerated by physicians no longer forced to practise it.

Restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee.

Scientists who dislike constraints on research like to remark that a truly great research worker needs only three pieces of equipment: a pencil, a pieve of paper and a brain. But they quote this maxim more often at academic banquets than at budget hearings.

Slavery in America was perpetuated not merely by human badness but also by human blindness. ... Men convinced themselves that a system that was so economically profitable must be morally justifiable. ... Science was commandeered to prove the biological inferiority of the Negro. Even philosophical logic was manipulated [exemplified by] an Aristotlian syllogism:
All men are made in the image of God;
God, as everyone knows, is not a Negro;
Therefore, the Negro is not a man.

Success in research needs four Gs: Glück, Geduld, Geschick und Geld. Luck, patience, skill and money.

The best patient is a millionaire with a positive Wassermann [antibody test for syphilis]. In Carl Malmberg , 140 Million Patients (1947), 30. Medical proverb before the discovery of antibiotics.

The determination of the value of an item must not be based on its price, but rather on the utility it yields. The price of the item is dependent only on the thing itself and is equal for everyone; the utility, however, is dependent on the particular circumstances of the person making the estimate. Thus there is no doubt that a gain of one thousand ducats is more significant to a pauper than to a rich man though both gain the same amount.

The examination system, and the fact that instruction is treated mainly as a training for a livelihood, leads the young to regard knowledge from a purely utilitarian point of view as the road to money, not as the gateway to wisdom.

The Grand Duke [of Tuscany] …after observing the Medicaean plants several times with me … has now invited me to attach myself to him with the annual salary of one thousand florins, and with the title of Philosopher and Principal Mathematicial to His Highness; without the duties of office to perform, but with the most complete leisure; so that I can complete my Treatises...

The inhabitants of Harley Street and Wimpole Street had so taken up with their private practices that they had neglected to add to knowledge. The pursuit of learning had been handicapped by the pursuit of gain.

The new naval treaty permits the United States to spend a billion dollars on warships—a sum greater than has been accumulated by all our endowed institutions of learning in their entire history. Unintelligence could go no further! ... [In Great Britain, the situation is similar.] ... Until the figures are reversed, ... nations deceive themselves as to what they care about most.

The only place where a dollar is still worth one hundred cents today is in the problems in an arithmetic book.

The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and social problems fall to a large extent within their juristiction.

The surgeon should not love difficult cases and should not allow himself to be tempted to undertake those that are desperate. He should help the poor as far as he can, but he should not hesitate to ask for good fees from the rich.

The threat of a neglected cold is for doctors what the threat of purgatory is for priests—a gold mine.

There has never been just 'coach class' health care, but with these amenities you are seeing people get priorities according to your ability to pay. It's one thing to say you get perks; it's another to say you can buy your way to the head of the line.

There is no profession so incompatible with original enquiry as is a Scotch Professorship, where one's income depends on the numbers of pupils. Is there one Professor in Edinburgh pursuing science with zeal? Are they not all occupied as showmen whose principal object is to attract pupils and make money?

Time... is an essential requirement for effective research. An investigator may be given a palace to live in, a perfect laboratory to work in, he may be surrounded by all the conveniences money can provide; but if his time is taken from him he will remain sterile.

To be great, a surgeon must have a fierce determination to be the leader in his field. He must have a driving ego, a hunger beyond money. He must have a passion for perfectionism. He is like the actor who wants his name in lights.

Unless there exist peculiar institutions for the support of such inquirers, or unless the Government directly interfere, the contriver of a thaumatrope may derive profit from his ingenuity, whilst he who unravels the laws of light and vision, on which multitudes of phenomena depend, shall descend unrewarded to the tomb.

While electric railroading is perhaps the most important branch of electrical engineering, at least as regards commercial importance, considering the amount capital invested therein, nevertheless it is a remarkable fact that while most other branches of electrical engineering had been developed to a very high degree of perfection, even a few years ago theoretical investigation of electric railroading was still conspicuous by its almost entire absence.
All the work was done by some kind of empirical experimenting, that is, some kind of motor was fitted up with some gearing or some sort of railway car, and then run, and if the motor burned out frequently it was replaced with a larger motor, and if it did not burn out, a trailer was put on the car, and perhaps a second trailer, until the increase of the expense account in burn-outs of the motors balanced the increased carrying capacity of the train.

You can't go by mathematics: the dollar you borrow is never as big as the dollar you pay back.

You Surgeons of London, who puzzle your Pates,
To ride in your Coaches, and purchase Estates,
Give over, for Shame, for your Pride has a Fall,
And ye Doctress of Epsom has outdone you all.

Dame Nature has given her a doctor's degree,
She gets all the patients and pockets the fee;
So if you don't instantly prove it a cheat,
She'll loll in a chariot whilst you walk the street.
Cautioning doctors about the quack bone-setter, Mrs. Mapp (d. 22 Dec 1737), who practiced in Epsom town once a week, arriving in a coach-and-four.