Paul Farmer Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“The human rights community has focused very narrowly on political and civil rights for many decades, and with reason, but now we have to ask how can we broaden the view.”

“If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.”

“Haiti is always talking about decentralization and nothing has been so obvious, perhaps a weakness, as the centralized nature of Haitian society as being revealed by the earthquake. I mean, they lost all these medical training programs because they didn't have them anywhere else.”

“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.”

“I critique market-based medicine not because I haven't seen its heights but because I've seen its depths.”

“I'm one of six kids, and the eight of us lived for over a decade in either a bus or a boat.”

“Everybody should be interested in access to primary and secondary education for everybody.”

“I'm not an austere person.”

“I don't know much about climate change. But I'm pretty sure we better figure out what to do to lessen its impact - at least its health impact - and that's not going to happen unless you have a lot of young talent interested in these topics.”

“I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti.”