Florence Nightingale

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.

— Florence Nightingale

How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.

— Florence Nightingale

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

— Florence Nightingale

The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.

— Florence Nightingale

Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.

— Florence Nightingale

I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

— Florence Nightingale

What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior... jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.

— Florence Nightingale

No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this—“devoted and obedient.” This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.

— Florence Nightingale

So I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.

— Florence Nightingale