"This is the uncomfortable truth about teaching. By traditional ethics and public insistence (not to mention court rulings), a patient's right to the best care possible must trump the objective of training novices. We want perfection without practice," p. 24.

"Western medicine is dominated by a single imperative—the quest for machinelike perfection in the delivery of care," p. 37.

"This was not guilt: guilt is what you feel when you have done something wrong. What I felt was shame: I was what was wrong," p. 61.

"People may actually prefer the world of don't ask don't tell. Just ask yourself, could you abide by a system that rehabilitated drug-addicted anesthesiologists, cardiac surgeons with manic psychosis, or pediatricians with a thing for little girls if it meant catching more of them?" p. 103.

"As is often the case, the people who were in the best position to see how dangerous Goodman...