Brand-name drugs have no competition, since the government grants them very long, exclusive marketing rights.

In economic terms, health care is a highly successful industry - profitable, growing, and virtually recession-proof - but it's a massive burden on the rest of the economy.

The United States is the only advanced country that permits the pharmaceutical industry to charge exactly what the market will bear, whatever it wants.

The use of psychoactive drugs - including both antidepressants and antipsychotics - has exploded...[yet] 'the tally of those who are disabled...increased nearly two and a half times.

Alternative medicine plays into this exaggerated notion that you can prevent disease simply by doing the right thing.

Why should anyone - the state, the medical profession, or anyone else - presume to tell someone else how much suffering they must endure as their life is ending?

Health care is a need; it's not a commodity, and it should be distributed according to need. If you're very sick, you should have a lot of it. If you're not sick, you shouldn't have a lot of it.

I do think that we are an overmedicated society.

The pharmaceutical industry isn't the only place where there's waste and inefficiency and profiteering. That happens in much of the rest of the health care industry.

There is something so biologically implausible that your attitude is going to cure a disease. Theres a tremendous arrogance to imagine that your mind is all that powerful.

We should be willing to spend the money in return for the innovation.

I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it?

Be always faithful to me, as I always desire to keep you in peace; and if there have been wiser kings, none has ever loved you more than I have.

None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom, or indifference over his inward joy.

Be modest. A lot was accomplished before you were born.

The light of friendship is like light of phosphorus, seen plainest when all around is dark.

We need to get our sons and daughters home and their responsibility for the security of Iraq needs to be assumed by Iraqis who will stand up and toe the line for their countries.

Most people get their politics, obviously, from TV shows about senators or movies about them or... all the day-to-day press and the talk shows.

It's really challenging to play comedy.

Still, it's clear that there are lots of people out there who are uncomfortable [about racism]. The Civil War was a long time ago but there are aspects of it that remain unsettled.

Education is the apprenticeship of life