Quotes by Surgeons

An ounce of cancer prevention is worth a ton of cancer cure.
Robert A. Wascher
Diseases can be our spiritual flat tires - disruptions in our lives that seem to be disasters at the time but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way.
Bernie S. Siegel
Worry affects the circulation the heart the glands the whole nervous system and profoundly affects the health. You have never known a man who died from overwork but many who died from doubt.
Charles W. Mayo
Employment is nature's physician and is essential to human happiness.
Galen
Skill is fine and genius is splendid but the right contacts are more valuable than either.
Sir Archibald Mclndoe
Man cannot remake himself without suffering for he is both the marble and the sculptor.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
The fundamental problem most patients have is an inability to love themselves having been unloved by others during some crucial part of their lives.
Bernie S. Siegel
A few observations and much reasoning lead to error many observations and a little reasoning to truth.
Alexis Carrel
Prayer like radium is a luminous and self-generating form of energy.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Prayer is a cry of distress a demand for help a hymn of love.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
When we pray we link ourselves with an inexhaustible motive power.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
The influence of prayer on the human mind and body ... can be measured in terms of increased physical buoyancy greater intellectual vigor moral stamina and a deeper understanding of the realities underlying human relationships.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Prayer is the force as real as terrestrial gravity. As a physician I have seen men after all other therapy had failed lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body mind and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Diseases can be our spiritual flat tires - disruptions in our lives that seem to be disasters at the time but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way.
Bernie Siegel
It takes more distress and poison to kill someone who has peace of mind and loves life.
Bernie S. Siegel
To accomplish our destiny ... we must cover before nightfall the distance assigned to each of us.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Don't bother about genius. Don't worry about being clever. Trust to hard work perseverance and determination. And the best motto for a long march is "Don't grumble. Plug on!"
Sir Frederick Treves
If you watch how nature deals with adversity continually renewing itself you can't help but learn.
Bernie Siegel
Prayer like radium is a luminous and self-generating form of energy.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Prayer is a cry of distress a demand for help a hymn of love.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
When we pray we link ourselves with an inexhaustible motive power.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
The influence of prayer on the human mind and body ... can be measured in terms of increased physical buoyancy greater intellectual vigor moral stamina and a deeper understanding of the realities underlying human relationships.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Prayer is the force as real as terrestrial gravity. As a physician I have seen men after all other therapy had failed lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body mind and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Diseases can be our spiritual flat tires - disruptions in our lives that seem to be disasters at the time but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way.
Bernie Siegel
It takes more distress and poison to kill someone who has peace of mind and loves life.
Bernie S. Siegel
To accomplish our destiny ... we must cover before nightfall the distance assigned to each of us.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Don't bother about genius. Don't worry about being clever. Trust to hard work perseverance and determination. And the best motto for a long march is "Don't grumble. Plug on!"
Sir Frederick Treves
If you watch how nature deals with adversity continually renewing itself you can't help but learn.
Bernie Siegel
Disease often tells its secrets in a casual parenthesis.
Wilfred Trotter
Those in the United States who by and large have the best medical care and advice readily available to them at the least expense are the families of the specialists in internal medicine. These families use less medicine and undergo less surgery on the whole than any other group rich or poor.
Edward C. Lambert
Doctors are busy playing God when so few of us have the qualifications. And besides the job is taken.
Bernie S. Siegel
I find I'm luckier when I work harder.
Dr. Denton Cooley
If God came in and said "I want you to be happy for the rest of your life " what would you do?
Bernie Siegel
Don't do things to not die do things to enjoy living. The by-product may be not dying.
Bernie S. Siegel
Intuition ... appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Refusal to hope is nothing more than a decision to die.
Bernie S. Siegel
A few observations and much reasoning lead to error many observations and a little reasoning to truth.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
The simple truth is that happy people generally don't get sick.
Bernie S. Siegel
The full-grown modern human being ... is conscious of touching the highest pinnacle of fulfillment... when he is consumed in the service of an idea in the conquest of the goal pursued.
R. Briffault
He is conscious of touching the highest pinnacle of fulfillment... when he is consumed in the service of an idea in the conquest of the goal pursued.
R. Briffault
To what extent is any given man morally responsible for any given act? We do not know.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
It is faith and not reason which impels men to action. ... Intelligence is content to point out the road but never drives us along it.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
One cannot get through life without pain.... What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us.
Bernie S. Siegel
In the face of uncertainty there is nothing wrong with hope.
Bernie S. Siegel
When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
Harry Burns
Man cannot remake himself without suffering for he is both the marble and the sculptor.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
Life leaps like a geyser for those who drill through the rock of inertia.
Dr. Alexis Carrel
One cannot get through life without pain. ... What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us.
Bernie S. Siegel
Mothers are generally starvers or feeders
Fiona Wood
I could still feel the echo of his hand on mine.
I.W. Gregorio
A nutritive centre, anatomically considered, is merely a cell, the nucleus of which is the permanent source of successive broods of young cells, which from time to time fill the cavity of their parent, and carrying with them the cell wall of the parent, pass off in certain directions, and under various forms, according to the texture or organ of which their parent forms a part.
John Goodsir
Stress level: extreme. It's like she was a jar with the lid screwed on too tight, and inside the jar were pickles, angry pickles, and they were fermenting, and about to explode.
Fiona Wood
... consider the meaning of these images. Every time you're working with them, ask yourself: what do they mean? And, even more important, what do they mean to me? The more specific and personal something is, the more its universality emerges.
Fiona Wood
The striking thing is that WHO doesn't really have the authority to do any of this. It can't tell governments what to do. It hires no vaccinators, distributes no vaccine. It is a small Geneva bureaucracy run by several hundred international delegates whose annual votes tell the organization what to do but not how to do it.…The only substantial resource that WHO has cultivated is information and expertise.
Atul Gawande
It is an odd thing that you can easily get millions of pounds for weapons to destroy life, but it is exceedingly difficult to get thousands for weapons to preserve it.
James Harpole
Are doctors who make mistakes villains? No, because then we all are.
Atul Gawande
The possibilities and probabilities are all we have to work with in medicine, though. What we are drawn to in this imperfect science, what we in fact covet in our way, is the alterable moment-the fragile but crystalline opportunity for one's know-how, ability, or just gut instinct to change the course of another's life for the better.
Atul Gawande
Western doctors are like poor plumbers. They treat a splashing tube by cleaning up the water. These plumbers are extremely apt at drying up the water, constantly inventing new, expensive, and refined methods of drying up water. Somebody should teach them how to close the tap.
Denis Parsons Burkitt
Statistics are somewhat like old medical journals, or like revolvers in newly opened mining districts. Most men rarely use them, and find it troublesome to preserve them so as to have them easy of access; but when they do want them, they want them badly.
John Shaw Billings
There is no way to deter old age from its grim duty, but a life of accomplishments makes up in quality for what it cannot add in quantity.
Dr. Sherwin Nuland