Quote

That's when I feel most alive, when I'm helping people.

Paul Farmer

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Paul Farmer
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: October 26
Anthropologist
Human Rights Activist
Medical Anthropologist
Physician
North Adams
Massachusetts
Alive
Helping
Feel
Feels
People

More quotes by Paul Farmer

Image
The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.
Paul Farmer
Image
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
Image
I would say that, intellectually, Catholicism had no more impact on me than did social theory.
Paul Farmer
Image
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
Image
What I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.
Paul Farmer
Image
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
Image
If I am hungry, that is a material problem if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem.
Paul Farmer
Image
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
Image
Everybody should be interested in access to primary and secondary education for everybody.
Paul Farmer
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Equity is the only acceptable goal
Paul Farmer
Image
The essence of global health equity is the idea that something so precious as health might be viewed as a right.
Paul Farmer
Image
The poorest parts of the world are by and large the places in which one can best view the worst of medicine and not because doctors in these countries have different ideas about what constitutes modern medicine. It's the system and its limitations that are to blame.
Paul Farmer
Image
The thing about rights is that in the end you can't prove what should be considered a right.
Paul Farmer
Image
I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti.
Paul Farmer
Image
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.
Paul Farmer
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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