“One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.” – Sir William Osler, often referred to as the “father of modern medicine,” who was known not only for his immense contributions to the practice of medicine but also for his philosophy regarding clinical practice and medical education.
One of Osler’s core beliefs was the importance of listening to patients and understanding their symptoms as a path to diagnosis. He famously said: “Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis.”
A favorite Osler quote of mine, one I always teach students and one that reminds me “everyone has a story” that we should hear, not only for the patient’s sake, but for ours, goes like this: “Nothing will sustain you more potently than the power to recognize in your humdrum routine, as perhaps it may be thought, the true poetry of life—the poetry of the commonplace, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs.”
“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” – Hippocrates
“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.” – William S. Burroughs
“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” – Admiral David Farragut during the Battle of Mobile Bay in the American Civil War on August 5, 1864
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – attributed to Mark Twain
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” – Henry David Thoreau
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” – Amelia Earhart
“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” – Sun Tzu
“Learning occurs only after repetitive demoralizing failures” – unknown
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“But great art—or let’s just say, more modestly original art—is never created in the safe middle ground but always at the edge. Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes, disrespects sacred cows, or other such entities. It can be shocking, or ugly, or, to use the catch-all term so beloved of the tabloid press, ‘controversial’… But if we believe in liberty, if we want the air we breathe to remain plentiful and breathable, this is the kind of art whose right to exist we must not only defend, but celebrate. Art is not entertainment. At its very best, it’s a revolution.” – Salman Rushdie
