And Now For Something Completely Different

After all of the heavy lifting in this column in recent weeks, I am going to change the pace to something a bit more whimsical with some medical, business, and finance related quips and adages that I have accumulated.

Perhaps we can take a moment to reflect, seeking wisdom rather than immediate practicalities. We'll get back to those later. If you have any of your own personal favorites by the way, please let me know for the next time that the muse visits. So, to work:

Life is about the contracts that you make with people. So you need the goodwill of your bosses, but even more the goodwill of your colleagues and subordinates.

Successful organizations are those in which all employees are encouraged to define their jobs broadly, not narrowly. (Those of a certain age will remember Bill Dana in a TV series acting as a custodian who was famous for saying, "Iss not my chob, man." We all have met suchlike.)

As long as people are desirous of living, physicians will be well paid.

- Bruyere

Medicine is the only profession that seeks to put itself out of business.

- Bryce

A disease known is half-cured.

- Fuller (Reminds me of that other great seer, Dr. Phil, who is known to say "If you want to own it, you have to name it”).

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book.

- Irish proverb

All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.

- Thomas Mann

To lose one's health is to render wealth useless.

- Herophilus

Disease makes men more physical. It leaves them with nothing but body.

- Thomas Mann

The only way for a rich man to be healthy is to live as if he were poor.

- Temple

If your business keeps you so busy that you have no time for anything else, then there is something wrong; either with you or your business.

- Boetcker

All purchases are born of dissatisfaction with your current state.

- Bryngeleson (I guess that applies to services as well).

Speculator: One who bought stocks that went down.

- Forbes (You can probably guess what the definition of an "investor" is...)

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target that no one else can see.

- Schopenhauer

Nothing worth knowing was ever common knowledge.

The science you don't know looks like magic.

- Arthur Clarke

Financial assets arise from a desire to postpone consumption, so that money can be saved, either as a precaution, or in the hope of growing the amount. So financial assets are not ‘wealth,’ (actual things) but a claim on real wealth. If those claims rise in price that does not mean that real wealth has increased. (In other words, if 6 people want to split a pizza, you still only have 1 pizza).

What is a committee? It is a group of the unwilling, picked from the uninterested, to do the unnecessary.

- Harkness (If you've ever been on a hospital staff, you feel this man's pain).

He who likes not his business, his business likes not him.

- Hazlitt

Which leads to…

The man who is above his business may one day find his business above him.

- Drew (Yet another reason to keep reading Physicians Money Digest).

See you next week.