Quack Quotes & Sayings

In the depths of a man's being there was something that responded with a quack to such perfume. Quack! — Saul Bellow

Quack, damn you! — Jamie Hyneman

The empiric easily degenerates into the quack. He does not know where his knowledge begins or leaves off, and so when he gets beyond routine conditions he begins to pretend-to make claims for which there is no justification, and to trust to luck and to ability to impose upon others-to "bluff." — John Dewey

We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison; let the vender prove it to be sanative. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Cogg would suddenly stand stock still. "Listen," he would say. Some feeble quack would be heard from the willow beyond the pond. "That's an easy one to tell. The frog-pippit." Then he would add, As a safety measure, "As I believe they call it in these parts." — Stephen Potter

A company of wolves, is better than a company of wolves in sheep's clothing. — Anthony Liccione

A well-bred duckling spreads his feet wide apart, just like his father and mother, in this way. Now bend your neck, and say 'quack.'" The — Hans Christian Andersen

Debbie glanced at her cards. "Okay," she said, "Aleksander Koturovic was a Serbian biochemist and neurophysiologist before people used those words. He also did a lot of research into evolution and wrote a few papers on Neanderthal man and extinctions. He was the Walter Bishop of his time, and most of his ideas got him labeled as a quack." She gave a little smile as she flipped an index card to the back of the pile. "To be honest, half his ideas would still get him labeled as a quack. — Peter Clines

As I told you, I'm not the settlement midwife. I've not birthed one baby." "But you are an herbalist." "I suppose I am. The woods and Ma Horn have been my teachers since I was a girl." She looked away from him, embarrassed. Here she was, considering him a quack, and he was unraveling her own lack of expertise fast as a spool of thread. "I'm finding the settlers here a superstitious lot. I dinna doubt you are much the same." She sat up straighter. "What do you mean?" "Axes under the bed tae cut the pain of childbirth. Garlic charms and spells. Boiling beaver tails tae cure snakebite. No' tae mention the misuse of useful herbs." Her own face clouded. "I do none of those things." He looked doubtful. "Prove it." "How do you expect me to do that?" His steely eyes held a challenge. "Work alongside me. — Laura Frantz

It was both terrible and oddly humbling to realize how easily physical discomfort could take control, expanding like poison gas until it owned all the floor-space, took over the entire playing field. Grief? Loss? What were those things when you could feel cold on the march, moving in from your fingers and toes, crawling up your motherfucking nose, and moving where? Toward the brain, do it please ya. And toward the heart. In the grip of cold like that, grief and loss were nothing but words. No, not even that. Only sounds. So much meaningless quack as you sat shuddering under the stars, waiting for a morning that would never come. — Stephen King

When did the world begin and how?"
I asked a lamb, a goat, a cow:

"What's it all about and why?"
I asked a hog as he went by:

"Where will the whole thing end, and when?"
I asked a duck, a goose, a hen:

And I copied all the answers too,
A quack, a honk, an oink, a moo. — Robert Clairmont

He had Oly letter a little card that he taped on his wall. The thing read, 'The only liars bigger than the quack are the quack's patients.' Arty used to just keep me in stitches. Eleven years old he was then. — Katherine Dunn

I hear them marvel at my work
my indignant science. I hear them call out in fear of what they see. And there are some gentlemen who doubt what I will tell them. They call me a liar and a charlatan or a quack. But in time the methods of science that I now employ to convince people will surely set them free
alas, this I cannot explain to the angry fools. (Spencer Black) — E.B. Hudspeth

The best lesson that any people can learn is that there is no patent cure-all which will make the body politic perfect, and that any man who is able glibly to answer every question as to how to deal with the evils of the body politic is at best a foolish visionary and at worst an evil-minded quack. — Theodore Roosevelt

But there was no way that any man would ever have typed up a list of instructions and usual information for his home, unless of course he were being paid to do so. It was the kind of thoughtful touch that only women were intrinsically capable of, no matter what any quack therapist on television said. — Emma Straub

In keeping with the American effort to reconcile with Japan, all of them, including those serving life sentences, would soon be paroled. It appears that even Sueharu Kitamura, "the Quack," was set free, in spite of his death sentence. By 1958, every war criminal who had not been executed would be free, and on December 30 of that year, all would be granted amnesty. Sugamo would be torn down, and the epic ordeals of POWs in Japan would fade from the world's memory. — Laura Hillenbrand

This original version of Coca-Cola contained a small amount of coca extract and therefore a trace of cocaine. (It was eliminated early in the twentieth century, though other extracts derived from coca leaves remain part of the drink to this day.) Its creation was not the accidental concoction of an amateur experimenting in his garden, but the deliberate and painstaking culmination of months of work by an experienced maker of quack remedies. — Tom Standage

In medicine, it has long been recognized that even a quack remedy that is harmless in itself can be fatal when it substitutes for an effective medication or treatment. The time is overdue for that same recognition to apply to politics. — Thomas Sowell

The new age self-help phenomenon is pretty mushy, but it's also very American. Our history is filled with traveling preachers and quack medicine and searches for the soul. I don't see this as a new thing. I think the new age is part of a phenomenon that's been there all along. — James Hillman

Don't quack like a duck, soar like an eagle. — Ken Blanchard

To practice magic is to be a quack; to know magic is to be a sage. — Eliphas Levi

This is where the strength of the physician lies, be he a quack, a homeopath or an allopath. He supplies the perennial demand for comfort, the craving for sympathy that every human sufferer feels. — Leo Tolstoy

A quick cure is a quack cure. — Margaret Thatcher

The thing about fashion - it's like ducks going quack, quack quack. It's being dictated from above, and it just makes me want to rebel against it. — Sara Blakely

(about Dr. Po) Just another quack spouting psychobabble. — Eoin Colfer

Except during outbreaks of vicious bigotry, it is difficult to persuade white America that the alienation of Black America is actual and ongoing, afflicting each generation through policy, custom, quack science, and if nothing else, the Look. — Theresa Perry

Have a good look at the thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no trickery. I don't want to waste this model, and then be told I'm a quack. — H.G.Wells

Sigmund Freud was a half baked Viennese quack. Our literature, culture, and the films of Woody Allen would be better today if Freud had never written a word. — Ian Shoales

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England. — George Orwell

Before the 20th century, the ulcer was not a respectable disease. Doctors would say, 'You're under a lot of stress.' Nineteenth-century Europe and America had all these crazy health spas and quack treatments. — Barry Marshall

Not really riding weather, is it, miss? Unless you're a duck." He chuckled at his own joke.
"Quack," Jenna said... — Deborah Blake

The believing mind reaches its perihelion in the so-called Liberals. They believe in each and every quack who sets up his booth inthe fairgrounds, including the Communists. The Communists have some talents too, but they always fall short of believing in the Liberals. — H.L. Mencken

Words were written out for me phonetically. I learned to quack in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese and German. — Clarence Nash

Graphology is another in a long list of quack substitutes for hard work. It is appealing to those who are impatient with such troublesome matters as research, evidence analysis, reasoning, logic, and hypothesis testing. — Robert Todd Carroll

Let's here it for modern dentistry, eh? I said, and he grimaced. Actually, as much as people dislike going to the dentist now, try doing it two hundred years ago, when having a cavity meant some quack knocking it out with a chisel and a hammer in the market square. With no anesthetic. — Cate Tiernan

Oh," said the mother, "that is not a turkey. How well he uses his legs, and how upright he holds himself! He is my own child, and he is not so very ugly after all if you look at him properly. Quack, quack! Come with me now. I will take you into grand society, and introduce you to the farmyard, but you must keep close to me or you may be trodden upon. And, above all, beware of the cat." When they reached the farmyard, — Hans Christian Andersen

I had a quack in the floor. So, I had to use ductile. — Andrew Sturm

In the narrow thread of sod between the shaved banks and the toppling fences grow the relics of what once was Illinois - the prairie.
No one in the bus sees these relics. A worried farmer, his fertilizer bill projecting from his shirt pocket, looks blankly at the lupines, lespedezas or Baptisias that originally pumped nitrogen out of the prairie air and into his black loamy acres. He does not distinguish them from the parvenu quack-grass in which they grow. Were I to ask him the name of that white spike of pea-like flowers hugging the fence, he would shake his head. A weed, likely. — Aldo Leopold

Every time I think of Tim Leary I get angry. He was a liar and a quack and a worse human being than Richard Nixon. For the last twenty-six years of his life he worked as an informant for the FBI and turned his friends into the police and betrayed the peace symbol he hid behind. — Hunter S. Thompson

At first, I was called a quack, a charlatan, and worse, year after year, in Australia, England and the United States, by men who simply refused to believe that a nurse from 'the bush' could devise a treatment which succeeded where they had failed. — Elizabeth Kenny

Check-ups are, in my experience, a grave mistake; all they do is allow the quack of your choice to tell you that you have some sort of complaint that you were far happier not knowing about. — John Mortimer

You're a bit of an odd duck aren't you Freda,' she says, her glasses hanging too low on her nose. 'Quack,' I reply. — L. H. Cosway

He finds the lying comes easy enough, of course. Words are just noises in a certain order, and he can use them any way he wishes. Pigs grunt, ducks quack, and men tell lies: that is how it generally goes. — Ian McGuire

Nothing is more detestable than a professed declaimer who retails his discourses as a quack does his medicines. — Jean Baptiste Massillon

I notice her blouse has pulled out of her skirt in the back again and force myself to stay calm. "Tuck your tail in, little duck," I say, smoothing the blouse back in place.
Prim giggles and give me a small "Quack."
"Quack yourself," I say with a light laugh. The kind only Prim can draw out of me. — Suzanne Collins

Doctors always think anybody doing something they aren't is a quack; also they think all patients are idiots. — Flannery O'Connor

Woman suffrage is an unjust, unreasonable, unspiritual abnormality. It is a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized proposition. It is a half-fledged, unmusical, Promethean abomination. It is a quack bolus to reduce masculinity even by the obliteration of femininity. — John Boyle O'Reilly

My colleagues thought I was an embarrassment because I was talking about mind, body, spirit. So I was called a quack. I was called a fraud, which I initially resented, but then I got used to it. — Deepak Chopra

The prophet and the quack are alike admired for a generation, and admired for the wrong reasons. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Rat-a-tat-tat."
"Quack." — Kate Angell

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack. — Keith Olbermann

"Lambe them, lads! lambe them!" a cant phrase of the time derived from the fate of Dr. Lambe, an astrologer and quack, who was knocked on the head by the rabble in Charles the First's time. — Walter Scott

Nothing is more despicable than a professional talker who uses his words as a quack uses his remedies. — Francois Fenelon

? People are still ill from the after-effects of these priestly quack-cures! For example, think of certain diets (avoidance of meat), of fasting, sexual abstinence — Anonymous

Turn pimp, flatterer, quack, lawyer, parson, be chaplain to an atheist, or stallion to an old woman, anything but a poet; for a poet is worse, more servile, timorous and fawning than any I have named. — William Congreve

There are two kinds of charlatan: the man who is called a charlatan, and the man who really is one. The first is the quack who cures you; the second is the highly qualified person who doesn't. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The charlatan is always the pioneer. From the astrologer came the astronomer, from the alchemist the chemist, from the mesmerist the experimental psychologist. The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Meow says the cat ,quack says the duck , Bow wow wow says the dog !
Grrrr! — Charles Dickens

He spoke in one of the American accents; Lydia couldn't distinguish among them. To her they all sounded dry and tinny. Almost quack-like. — Gregory Maguire

So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. Such a one has curculios, borers, knife-worms; a swindler ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then smooth, plausible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as Moloch. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I despise Birth-Control first because it is ... an entirely meaningless word; and is used so as to curry favour even with those who would first recoil from its real meaning. The proceeding these quack doctors recommend does not control any birth ... — Gilbert K. Chesterton

This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning "to quack like a duck." Like various other words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided — George Orwell

He waved irritably at a waiter. There was a small bar in a dark corner of the room, where an old, wizened bartender stood for long stretches of time without moving. When called upon, he moved with contemptuous slowness. His job was that of servant to men's relaxation and pleasure, but his manner was that of an embittered quack ministering to some guilty disease. — Ayn Rand

Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients he has never seen, is a quack. — Samuel Hopkins Adams

Penicillin sat on a shelf for ten years while I was called a quack. — Alexander Fleming

Quack: A boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand. A vain boastful pretender to physick; An artful, tricking practitioner in physick. — Samuel Johnson

She was as simple-hearted and honest as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. She gathered together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with hell following after. — Mark Twain

What a lesson, indeed, is all history and all life to the folly and fruitlessness of pride! The Egyptian kings had their embalmed bodies preserved in massive pyramids, to obtain an earthly immortality. In the seventeenth century they were sold as quack medicines, and now they are burnt for fuel! The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Heroes have gone out; quacks have come in; the reign of quacks has not ended with the nineteenth century. The sceptre is held with a firmer grasp; the empire has a wider boundary. We are all the slaves of quackery in one shape or another. Indeed, one portion of our being is always playing the successful quack to the other. — Thomas Carlyle

I am constantly asked: What can you, with your cold rationalism, offer to the seeker after salvation that is comparable to the cozy homelike comfort of a fenced-in dogmatic creed? To this the answer is many-sided.
First, I do not say that I can offer as much happiness as is to be obtained by the abdication of reason. I do not say that I can offer as much happiness as is to be obtained from drink or drugs or amassing great wealth by swindling widows and orphans. It is not the happiness of the individual convert that concerns me; it is the happiness of mankind. If you genuinely desire the happiness of mankind, certain forms of ignoble personal happiness are not open to you. If your child is ill, and you are a conscientious parent, you accept medical diagnosis, however doubtful and discouraging; if you accept the cheerful opinion of a quack and your child consequently dies, you are not excused by the pleasantness of belief in the quack while it lasted. — Bertrand Russell

Communists, socialists and fascists everywhere, from Mr. Obama upward, have taken to the global warming cause like a quack to colored water. Just about every word they utter on this subject is a falsehood calculated to deceive, or in plain English a lie. — Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton Of Brenchley

I warn every reader of this [article] to beware of quack medicines in religion. Beware of supposing that penitence, reformation, formality, and priestcraft[40] can ever give you peace with God. They cannot do it. It is not in them. The man who says they can must be ignorant of two things: he cannot know the length and breadth of human sinfulness; he cannot understand the height and depth of the holiness of God. There never breathed the man or woman on earth who tried to cleanse himself from his sins and in so doing obtained relief. — Arthur W. Pink

He who attempts to make others believe in means which he himself despises is a puffer; he who makes use of more means than he knows to be necessary is a quack; and he who ascribes to those means a greater efficacy than his own experience warrants is an impostor. — Johann Kaspar Lavater