In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.

The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.

It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.

There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.

The young physician starts life with 20 drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for 20 diseases.

To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.

Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.

Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert.

The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.

The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.

No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.

There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be familiar with their manifestations in many organs.

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.

The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.

The first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and to beget.

No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.

In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.

The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.

One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.

What is the student but a lover courting a fickle mistress who ever eludes his grasp?

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.

He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.

Variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease.

The future is today.

Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.

It is much simpler to buy books than to read them and easier to read them than to absorb their contents.

To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals - this alone is worth the struggle.

There is no disease more conducive to clinical humility than aneurysm of the aorta.

The teacher's life should have three periods, study until twenty-five, investigation until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance.

By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy - indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction.

Courage and cheerfulness will not only carry you over the rough places in life but will enable you to bring comfort and help to the weak hearted and will console you in the sad hours.

Acquire the art of detachment the virtue of method and the quality of thoroughness but above all the grace of humility.

What is patience but an equanimity which enables you to rise superior to the trials of life.

Patients should have rest food fresh air and exercise the quadrangle of health.

The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.

The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.

The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one's obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.

They've also, the government's decided now, what sexual content is.

Many hard comments have been made on my efforts in India from the side of the Congress party, yet I feel content in the deep conviction that the offer I traveled 22,000 miles to discuss with Indian leaders was a real contribution to a solution of our differences.

I endeavor to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content with what cannot be mended and patient when there be no redress.

There is no reality of consciousness independent of the effects of various vehicles of content on subsequent action (and hence, of course, on memory).

There's probably a way to use that great content and to live under the radar now and then in order to reach a new audience. That's the thinking I'm talking about.