Atul Gawande

There are, in human affairs, two kinds of problems: those which are amenable to a technical solution and those which are not. Universal health-care coverage belongs to the first category: you can pick one of several possible solutions, pass a bill, and (allowing for some tinkering around the edges) it will happen.

To ask questions can become the laziest and wobbliest occupation of a mind, but when you must yourself answer the problem that you have posed, you will meditate your question with care and frame it with precision.

You couldn't enclose people in institutions or hospitals or almshouses in the way the Victorians managed to do. India was too big. Seeing the suffering people was terrible, but I think I was more distraught at the needless cruelty to so many animals.