Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.
—Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian Short-Story Writer
Temperance and labor are the two best physicians of man; labor sharpens the appetite, and temperance prevents from indulging to excess.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
The doctor is to be feared more than the disease
—Latin Proverb
As long as men are liable to die and are desirous to live, a physician will be made fun of, but he will be well paid.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
Men who are occupied in the restoration of health to other men, by the joint exertion of skill and humanity, are above all the great of the earth. They even partake of divinity, since to preserve and renew is almost as noble as to create.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
The best doctor is the one you run to and can’t find.
—Denis Diderot (1713–84) French Philosopher, Writer
The practice of medicine is a thinker’s art, the practice of surgery a plumber s.
—Martin H. Fischer
Surgeons must be very careful. When they take the knife, underneath their fine incisions, stirs the culprit—life!
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?
—Unknown
The relation nurse/doctor is even more complex than the relation patient/doctor.
—Gerhard Kocher (b.1939) Swiss Publicist, Aphorist
I know of nothing more laughable than a doctor who does not die of old age.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
The difference between an itch and an allergy is about one hundred bucks.
—Unknown
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.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
—Samuel Butler
Nature, time and patience are the three great physicians.
—Common Proverb
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.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines—so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment treacherous, judgment difficult.
—Hippocrates (460–370 BCE) Ancient Greek Physician
Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm.
—Hippocrates (460–370 BCE) Ancient Greek Physician
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 (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning
—Lewis Thomas
The mistakes made by doctors are innumerable. They err habitually on the side of optimism as to treatment, of pessimism as to the outcome.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Deceive not thy physician, confessor, nor lawyer.
—George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh Anglican Poet, Orator, Clergyman
The first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
—William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian Physician
I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.
—John Donne (1572–1631) English Poet, Cleric
Cure the disease and kill the patient.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
Nature is better than a middling doctor.
—Common Proverb
A minor operation is one that is done on someone else.
—Richard Selzer (1928–2016) American Surgeon, Writer
When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.
—Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish Writer
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