Snake oil Quotes

“[Jack White] is the showman—the brassy frontman and the snake-oil trader.”

“Snake oil”

“snake oil”

“Wikicommons: Snake oil”

“Wikisource: Category:Snake oil”

“The shamans are forever yacking about their snake-oil "miracles." I prefer the Real McCoy — a pregnant woman.”

“Look, we're both snake oil salesman to a certain extent, but we do label the show as snake oil here. Isn't there a problem selling snake oil as vitamin tonic?”

“That kind of politics has to stop. That kind of quackery has to stop. We don't need anymore faith healers and snake oil salesmen. We need some doctors to take the bullets out.”

“In the Middle Ages people took potions for their ailments. In the 19th century they took snake oil. Citizens of today’s shiny, technological age are too modern for that. They take antioxidants and extract of cactus instead.”

“Mr. Speaker, there is an old trick to hawking snake oil. First raise the fear. Then sell to it. That is exactly what the big- union, Washington-based labor bosses are trying to do with their latest advertising campaign of fear and blatant disinformation.”

“Gandhi, Lakshmi (August 26, 2013), A History Of 'Snake Oil Salesmen', work: Code Switch, publisher: National Public Radio, retrieved: July 6, 2014”

“Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right. It isn't the gold standard that they want to put us back on. They want something even more basic. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard.”

“My dad's father was of Scots-Irish descent and a man of many hats. He was adopted by a neighboring family at the age of six after his single father decided to move on without him. As a young teenager, he ran away from the only real family he knew and set out to start a life for himself. I loved hearing his stories, some sounded like tall tales. Grandpa, a snake-oil salesman of sorts, rode the rails all over the country, selling anything and everything to earn a buck.”

“Richard Kunin visited San Francisco’s Chinatown to buy such snake oil and analyze it. According to his 1989 analysis published in the Western Journal of Medicine, Chinese water-snake oil contains 20 percent eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), one of the two types of omega-3 fatty acids most readily used by our bodies. Salmon, one of the most popular food sources of omega-3s, contains a maximum of 18 percent EPA, lower than that of snake oil.”

“Snake oil analyzed shows that it is a bit more about enhydris chinensis, the Chinese water snake. Apparently, it is a rich source of Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), an omega-3 fatty acid, which the human body converts into natural pain killers, such as series 3 Prostaglandins.”

“Clark Stanley reached into a sack, plucked out a snake, slit it open and plunged it into boiling water. When the fat rose to the top, he skimmed it off and used it on the spot to create 'Stanley's Snake Oil,' a liniment that was immediately snapped up by the throng that had gathered to watch the spectacle. Little wonder. After all, Stanley had proclaimed that the liniment would cure rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, lumbago, sore throat, frostbite and even toothache.”

“Numerous supplement products have emerged in the market in the last ten years. They range from vitamins and minerals to herbals and hormones. This boom has created an uncertain situation as to the quality and safety of dietary supplements. According to Bruce Silverglade from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 'the challenge for most consumers is to determine which supplements are beneficial and which are nothing more than 21st-century snake oil--or even dangerous.' That is why this legislation includes authorization of funds for physician and consumer education programs regarding adverse reactions.”

“In 1917, the U.S. government actually tested one of the bogus potions sold by Clark Stanley, the “Rattlesnake King,” and called Stanley's Snake Oil. it contained no EPA at all and consisted mostly of mineral oil and red pepper (with a tiny bit of beef fat, camphor, and turpentine thrown in), apparently similar to ingredients found in modern day capcaicin cream that is alleged to provide temporary arthritis relief. Interestingly, genuine snake oil is still sold in traditional Chinese pharmacy stores. A sample brought in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1989 was found to contain 75% of carrier material, such as camphor, and 25% of oil from Chinese water snakes, and 20% of that oil, in turn, was EPA.”

“Well, he is on the recovery board, right? I guess two things. Caterpillar has also opposed the "buy American" provisions in the stimulus package. Recently a spokesman for Caterpillar said that they were like snake oil. And I know that the final package is still being finalized. But I'm wondering, that, and the fact that Caterpillar -- probably one of the companies that most supports the Colombia free trade agreement, and says that the stalling of that on Capitol Hill -- and I believe the President also has expressed concerns about that free trade agreement -- that that stalling is basically sending a message to businesses in Colombia, please buy Canadian products, not American. Does Caterpillar's support for the Colombian free trade agreement and opposition to the "Buy American" provisions, under the same idea of what's good for their workers and good business, would that have any effect on the President's thinking?”

“This poet is now, most of the time, an elder statesman like Baruch or Smuts, full of complacent wisdom and cast-iron whimsy. But of course there was always a good deal of this in the official rôle that Frost created for himself; one imagines Yeats saying about Frost, as Sarah Bernhardt said about Nijinsky: “I fear, I greatly fear, that I have just seen the greatest actor in the world.”
Sometimes it is this public figure, this official rôle — the Only Genuine Robert Frost in Captivity — that writes the poems, and not the poet himself; and then one gets a self-made man’s political editorials, full of cracker-box philosophizing, almanac joke-cracking — of a snake-oil salesman’s mysticism; one gets the public figure’s relishing consciousness of himself, an astonishing constriction of imagination and sympathy; one gets sentimentality and whimsicality; an arch complacency, a complacent archness; and one gets Homely Wisdom till the cows come home.”