Richard Carmona Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“When I was 5, 6 - so you know, memories aren't that great - I remember coming home and I remember seeing all of our belongings on the street and a Salvation Army truck picking them up. We got taken to a shelter. And then we moved around a lot, finding places to stay.”

“As a young surgeon in training at the University of California San Francisco General Hospital in the early '80s, my colleagues and I were inundated with an epidemic of young men with fevers, rashes, swollen lymph nodes and eventually death.”

“I am my own version of the DREAM Act.”

“I really think the most important thing I do is to protect the dignity and the integrity of the Office of the Surgeon General.”

“I used to be a real doctor. Now I just play one on TV.”

“If you want to communicate with the American public, the literature tells you you've got to be talking at about a sixth-grade, seventh-grade level.”

“I've had opportunities before to run for office - the Republicans recruited me when I was surgeon general, to run for Congress, to run against Gov. Napolitano. But I didn't feel it was my calling... I felt, 'Well, I'm flattered, but I really would rather stay and be the doctor of the nation and stay as surgeon general.'”

“When I came home after my statutory term as surgeon general, I just resumed my life here in southern Arizona. Teaching at the university; my law enforcement career. Sitting on some boards. All the things I did before.”

“Actions, such as the designation of National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, spring from First Lady Michelle Obama's leadership of efforts to end childhood obesity within this generation.”

“I still look at my job as being a doctor of the people, and I'm going to look at the science... If we can find a viable alternative that gave us harm reduction as people are withdrawing from nicotine, I'm happy to engage in that science and see if we can do that.”