Surgeons Quotes

• Surgeon general's job is to protect, promote and advance the health, safety and security of the nation.

  Richard Carmona

  Safety, Protect, Security

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• Some wounds grow worse beneath the surgeon's hand;
  Better that they were not touched at all.

  Ovid

  Hands, Restraint, Grows

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• True teaching cannot be learned from text-books any more than a surgeon can acquire his skill by reading about surgery.

  Helen Keller

  Teaching, Reading, Book

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• A good surgeon doesn't just concentrate on technical ability, but also on the appropriateness of what you're doing.

  Benjamin Carson

  Ability, Appropriateness

  "Dr. Ben Carson ‘Gifted Hands’ Interview with Kam Williams". newsblaze.com. February 6, 2009.

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• A rich man's faults are covered with money, but a surgeon's faults are covered with earth.

  Abraham Verghese

  Men, Earth, Faults

  Abraham Verghese (2012). “Cutting for Stone”, p.121, Random House India

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• And If the surgeon is like a poet, then the scars you have made on countless bodies are like verses into the fashioning of which you have poured your soul.

  Richard Selzer

  Soul, Body, Scar

  Richard Selzer (1996). “Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery”, p.94, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A successful surgeon should be a man who, when asked to name the three best surgeons in the world, would have difficulty deciding on the other two.

  Denton Cooley

  Successful, Men, Names

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• He who wishes to be a surgeon should go to war.

  Hippocrates

  War, Wish, Should

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• I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

  Norman Mailer

  Happiness, Cutting, Thinking

  Norman Mailer (2013). “Tough Guys Don't Dance: A Novel”, p.27, Random House

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• At a given instant everything the surgeon knows suddenly becomes important to the solution of the problem. You can't do it an hour later, or tomorrow. Nor can you go to the library and look it up.

  John W. Kirklin

  Knowledge, Science, Important

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• 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

  Love, Character, Mean

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• Healing comes from taking responsibility: to realize that it is you - and no one else - that creates your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions.

  Peter Shepherd

  Happiness, Success, Responsibility

  Peter Shepherd (2010). “Daring to Be Yourself”, p.124, DoctorZed Publishing

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• The best prescription is knowledge.

  C. Everett Koop

  Health, Knowledge, Personal Growth

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  Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Nursing, Nurse, Important

  "Simpson's Contemporary Quotations". Book by James Beasley Simpson, 1988.

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• It is the surgeon’s duty to tranquillize the temper, to beget cheerfulness, and to impart confidence of recovery.

  Astley Cooper

  Recovery, Duty, Temper

  Sir Astley Cooper (1825). “The Lectures of Sir Astley Cooper: On the Principles and Practice of Surgery”, p.30

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• As a surgeon you have to have a controlled arrogance. If it's uncontrolled, you kill people, but you have to be pretty arrogant to saw through a person's chest, take out their heart and believe you can fix it. Then, when you succeed and the patient survives, you pray, because it's only by the grace of God that you get there.

  Mehmet Oz

  Believe, Heart, People

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• Surgeons must be very careful
  When they take the knife!
  Underneath their fine incisions
  Stirs the Culprit-Life!

  Emily Dickinson

  Life, Science, Doctors

  "Surgeons must be very careful" l. 1 (ca. 1860)

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• Dura est manus cirurgi, sed sanans. The hand of the surgeon is hard, but healing.

  Walter Map

  Healing, Hands, Hard

  c.1181 De Nugis Curialium, Distinction 4, ch.4.

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• The only weapon with which the unconscious patient can immediately retaliate upon the incompetent surgeon is hemorrhage.

  William Stewart Halsted

  Science, Medicine, Weapons

  Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital 23: 191 (1912)

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• Be patient with yourself. Perfection comes not in this life, but in the next life. Don't demand things that are unreasonable, but demand of yourself improvement. As you let the Lord help you through that, He will make the difference.

  Russell M. Nelson

  Life, Motivational, Change

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• Every eye is an eye, when you're doing the surgery there that is just as important as if you were doing eye surgery on the prime minster or the king.

  Fred Hollows

  Kings, Eye, Medicine

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• Like a surgeon, friends cut you in order to heal you.

  Timothy Keller

  Cutting, Order, Heal

  Timothy Keller (2011). “The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God”, p.72, Penguin

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• The surgeon knows all the parts of the brain but he does not know his patient's dreams.

  Richard Selzer

  Dream, Brain, Doe

  Mortal Lessons p. 21. Chatto & Windus, London (1981)

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• The wounded surgeon plies the steel
  That questions the distempered part;
  Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
  The sharp compassion of the healer's art
  Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Compassion, Hands

  'Four Quartets' 'East Coker' (1940) pt. 4

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• Every surgeon carries within himself a small cemetery, where from time to time he goes to pray.

  Rene Leriche

  Praying, Cemetery, Carrie

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