Quotes about doctors

"A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own."

Auden, W. H. on doctors
3 fans of this quote   

"Cure the disease and kill the patient."

Bacon, Francis on doctors
8 fans of this quote   

"When a man goes through six years training to be a doctor he will never be the same. He knows too much."

Bagnold, Enid on doctors
3 fans of this quote   

"One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating. This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth."

Berger, John on doctors
3 fans of this quote   

"Nature, time and patience are the three great physicians."

Bohn, H. G. on doctors
5 fans of this quote   

"Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died."

Bombeck, Erma on doctors
5 fans of this quote   

"Doctors will have more lives to answer for in the next world than even we generals."

Bonaparte, Napoleon on doctors
3 fans of this quote   

"A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war."

Butler, Samuel on doctors   

"Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too."

Chekhov, Anton on doctors
5 fans of this quote   

"I asked [my doctors] if I'd be able to play singles tennis and they said I could. That made me very happy since I haven't played in five years."

Cronkite, Walter on doctors   

"Surgeons must be very careful. When they take the knife!, underneath their fine incisions, stirs the Culprit -- Life!"

Dickinson, Emily on doctors
3 fans of this quote   

"The best doctor is the one you run to and can't find."

Diderot, Denis on doctors   

"I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease."

Donne, John on doctors   

"When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge."

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan on doctors   

"The more ignorant, reckless and thoughtless a doctor is, the higher his reputation soars even amongst powerful princes."

Erasmus, Desiderius on doctors
3 fans of this quote   

"The practice of medicine is a thinker's art, the practice of surgery a plumber s."

Fisher, Martin H. on doctors   

"God heals and the doctor takes the fee."

Franklin, Benjamin on doctors
23 fans of this quote   

"The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him."

Freud, Sigmund on doctors
5 fans of this quote   

"Employment is nature's physician, and is essential to human happiness."

Galen, Claudius on doctors   

"The doctor found, when she was dead, her last disorder mortal."

Goldsmith, Oliver on doctors   

"The physician's highest calling, his only calling, is to make sick people healthy -- to heal, as it is termed."

Hahnemann, Samuel on doctors   

"I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another's company and aid in consultation. A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend you to a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success."

Hemingway, Ernest on doctors   

"Deceive not thy physician, confessor, nor lawyer."

Herbert, George on doctors   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult."

Hippocrates on doctors
8 fans of this quote   

"Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm."

Hippocrates on doctors
4 fans of this quote   

"What I call a good patient is one who, having found a good physician, sticks to him till he dies."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on doctors
3 fans of this quote   

"It is the duty of a doctor to prolong life and it is not his duty to prolong the act of dying."

Horder, Thomas on doctors
3 fans of this quote   

"I suppose one has a greater sense of intellectual degradation after an interview with a doctor than from any human experience."

James, Alice on doctors   

"My doctor gave me six months to live but when I couldn't pay the bill, he gave me six months more."

Matthau, Walter on doctors   

"I wasn't driven into medicine by a social conscience but by rampant curiosity."

Miller, Jonathan on doctors   

"Instead of wishing to see more doctors made by women joining what there are, I wish to see as few doctors, either male or female, as possible. For, mark you, the women have made no improvement -- they have only tried to be men and they have only succeeded in being third-rate men."

Nightingale, Florence on doctors   

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

Osler, Sir William on doctors   

"Time is generally the best doctor."

Ovid on doctors   

"Is it not also true that no physician, in so far as he is a physician, considers or enjoins what is for the physician's interest, but that all seek the good of their patients? For we have agreed that a physician strictly so called, is a ruler of bodies, and not a maker of money, have we not?"

Plato on doctors   

"Cured yesterday of my disease, I died last night of my physician."

Prior, Matthew on doctors   

"For each illness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in healthy people by inoculating them with the virus that is a thousand times more powerful than any microbe: the idea that one is ill."

Proust, Marcel on doctors   

"The superior doctor prevents sickness; The mediocre doctor attends to impending sickness; The inferior doctor treats actual sickness;"

Proverb, Chinese on doctors
7 fans of this quote   

"A surgeon should be young a physician old."

Proverb, French on doctors   

"Physician, heal thyself."

Proverb, Hebrew on doctors   

"Every invalid is a physician."

Proverb, Irish on doctors