Our Malady Quotes

“The word freedom is hypocritical when spoken by the people who create the conditions that leave us sick and powerless. If our federal government and our commercial medicine make us unhealthy, they are making us unfree.”
― Timothy Snyder, Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary

“The Nazis treated health care as a way to divide the humans from the subhumans and nonhumans. If we see others as bearers of ailments and ourselves as healthy victims, we are little better than they. If we truly oppose the Nazi evil, we will try to think our way to its opposite, to the good. A part of that effort is to understand that all humans are subject to malady, and have an equal claim to care.”
― Timothy Snyder, Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary

“The one piece of information that best predicts whether Mr. Trump won or lost a county in November 2016 was the degree of opioid abuse.”
― Timothy Snyder, Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary

“When we are trapped in fear we see everything in binary terms: us or them, fight or flight.”
― Timothy Snyder, Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary

“When there is no one with time to talk, no chance to find another approach, then we come to feel that we have to choose between pain and pills. [...] When painkillers work, that creates a particular danger, because then we can ignore the deeper sources of suffering. [...] Suffering and self medicating are both lonely activities; they feel like free choices, but they create an imbalance that leaves us in bondage.”
― Timothy Snyder, Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary

“Most nations’ constitutions enshrine a right to health care. The list includes Japan and Germany, whose new constitutions the United States influenced after defeating them in the Second World War. Today Germans and Japanese live longer and healthier lives than Americans.”
― Timothy Snyder, Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary

“The mortality rate of babies borne by African American women is higher than in Albania, Kazakhstan, China, and about seventy other countries.”
― Timothy Snyder, Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary