Bernard Lown Quotes

• Do as much as possible for the patient, and as little as possible to the patient.

  Bernard Lown

  Medicine, Littles, Patient

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• In my view, the lost art of listening and ignoring the patient as a human being is a quintessential failure of our health care.

  Bernard Lown

  Art, Views, Listening

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• The security provided by a long-held belief system, even when poorly founded, is a strong impediment to progress. General acceptance of a practice becomes the proof of its validity, though it lacks all other merit.

  Bernard Lown

  Strong, Acceptance, Science

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• Some of life's biggest and most positive changes are propelled by mini conspiracies of a few well-meaning folks.

  Bernard Lown

  Change, Conspiracy, Folks

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• We must convince each generation that they are but transient passengers on this planet earth. It does not belong to them. They are not free to doom generations yet unborn. They are not at liberty to erase humanity's past nor dim its future.

  Bernard Lown

  Inspiring, Past, Humanity

  Bernard Lown's Nobel Lecture in Oslo, Norway, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1985.

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• Once a new paradigm takes hold, its acceptance is extraordinarily rapid and one finds few who claim to have adhered to a discarded method.

  Bernard Lown

  Acceptance, Science, Claims

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• I see nuclear weapons as the ultimate evil, not just evil, but the ultimate evil with the potential to make life unlivable on this planet.

  Bernard Lown

  Evil, Nuclear, Weapons

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• Nuclear bombs have made mass murder a reality. Nuclear bombs threaten humankind.

  Bernard Lown

  Reality, Nuclear, Bombs

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• The International Declaration of Human Rights says the right to housing, health, education should be guaranteed to everyone. The moment these things are provided, we will have a different world order and nuclear weapons will become less of a threat.

  Bernard Lown

  Health, Order, Rights

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• Nuclear weapons will not be gotten rid of until the United States confronts the magnitude of the horror, the tragedy, and the long-term suffering of the victims

  Bernard Lown

  Long, Suffering, Tragedy

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• As long as we rationalize nuclear weapons as "necessary" in order to save American lives, then nuclear weapons will never be gotten rid of.

  Bernard Lown

  Order, Long, Nuclear

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• We physicians have focused on the nuclear threat as the singular issue of our era. We are not indifferent to other human rights and hard-won civil liberties. But first we must be able to bequeath to our children the most fundamental of all rights, which preconditions all others; the right to survival.

  Bernard Lown

  Children, Issues, Rights

  Nobel Price Acceptance Speech, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1985.

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• Martin Buber suggested that evil prevailed because of the inability of man to imagine the real. Yet human beings do have that capacity. Lord Byron, a poet favored by Alfred Nobel, captured the stark essence of a post-nuclear world in his poem Darkness.

  Bernard Lown

  Real, Men, Essence

  "A Prescription for Hope". The Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1985.

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