Quotes
“Doctors are the happiest of all men; the world proclaims all their successes, and the earth covers all the mistakes they make.”
— Francis Quarles
“Doctors put drugs of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, into human beings of whom they know nothing.”
— Voltaire
“The medical profession has no good reputation; it has an infamous one.”
— Bernard Shaw
“Medicine is a profession with a good measure of material interest; it is very often used to acquire position and status. The reason so many people are drawn to medicine is the assurance that they will always be respected and important to society.”
— Dr. Jonathan Miller
“The medical profession is odious. When practiced among the rich we seem like lackeys; among the poor, like thieves.”
— Dr. Louis-Ferdinand Céline
“Medicine is an art founded on conjecture and perfected by homicide.”
— Sir Anthony Carlisle
“In a doctor's care, as if carried by a stern oar,
The patient holds out and dies by degrees.
But two doctors, like a good pair of oars,
Take him more quickly to the banks of the River Styx.”
— Anon
“He that sinneth before his Maker, let him fall into the hand of the physician.”
— Ecclesiasticus (a book of the Old Testament), 38:15
“Doctors are professional, licensed murderers.”
— Sydney Smith
“Doctors are all swabs.”*
— Billy Bones in Treasure Island
* In the original, a pun on the word swab, which means both a wad of cotton wound for cleaning or dressing wounds and, in slang, a clumsy person. (Translator's note)
REFERENCE: RICHARD GORDON. Os grandes desastres da medicina. 2th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Ediouro, 1997.
"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
American writer and activist Maya Angelou
