Insulin is not a cure for diabetes; it is a treatment. It enables the diabetic to burn sufficient carbohydrates so that proteins and fats may be added to the diet in sufficient quantities to provide energy for the economic burdens of life.

- Frederick Banting

Best and I worked in the sub-basement of the old medical building day and night. Time, meals, sleep - all were of secondary consideration. We had to get insulin into a form that was refined enough for continued clinical use.

- Frederick Banting

If a patient became sugar-free and blood sugar normal on a basal requirement diet, the caloric intake was gradually increased until sugar appeared in the urine. The tolerance was thus ascertained.

- Frederick Banting

Best said possibly the only thing that would have changed my attitude: 'What will happen to me?' 'Your friend MacLeod will look after you,' I said. Best replied, 'If you get out, I get out.' There was silence for some moments. I thought of all the joy of the early experiments which we had known together. Here was loyalty.

- Frederick Banting

During the first couple of years at school... I used to take my lunch and go down by the old fair grounds & sit alone by the side of the road & eat it... Those lovely, lonely lunches stick deep in my memory as unhappy times.

- Frederick Banting