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

Paul Farmer

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Paul Farmer
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: October 26
Anthropologist
Human Rights Activist
Medical Anthropologist
Physician
North Adams
Massachusetts
Ideas
Vegan
Matter
Root
World
Roots
Wrong
Less
Idea
Lives
Nature

More quotes by Paul Farmer

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That's when I feel most alive, when I'm helping people.
Paul Farmer
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I think, sometimes, that I'm going nuts, and that perhaps there is something good about blocking clean water for those who have none, making sure that illiterate children remain so, and preventing the resuscitation of the public health sector in the country most in need of it. Lunacy is what it is.
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It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.
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With rare exceptions, all of your most important achievements on this planet will come from working with others- or, in a word, partnership.
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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
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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
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People call me a saint and I think, I have to work harder. Because a saint would be a great thing to be.
Paul Farmer
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God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. You want to see where Christ crucified abides today? Go to where the poor are suffering and fighting back, and that's where He is.
Paul Farmer
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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
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We have to design a health delivery system by actually talking to people and asking, 'What would make this service better for you?' As soon as you start asking, you get a flood of answers.
Paul Farmer
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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
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If I am hungry, that is a material problem if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem.
Paul Farmer
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The idea that because you're born in Haiti you could die having a child. The idea that because you're born in you know Malawi your children may go to bed hungry. We want to take some of the chance out of that.
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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
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You can't have public health without a public health system. We just don't want to be part of a mindless competition for resources. We want to build back capacity in the system.
Paul Farmer
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I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti.
Paul Farmer
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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
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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
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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
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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