20th-century Physician Quotes

Keep in mind that whenever you are in a crisis, you are in the midst of danger as well as opportunity.

Adeline Yen Mah

An important fact to remember is that all natural diets, including purely vegetarian diets without a hint of dairy products, contain amounts of calcium that are above the treshold for meeting your nutritional needs....In fact, calcium deficiency caused by an insufficient amount if calcium in the diet is not known to occur in humans.

John A. McDougall

On being charged:

Murder... murder... Can you prove it was murder? [...] I didn't think you could prove it was murder. She was dying in any event.

John Bodkin Adams

A selective process goes on, whereby systems attract and keep those people whose attributes are such as to make them adapted to life in the system: Systems attract systems-people.

All individuals are imperfect and forgetful and find it difficult to transcend immediate self-interest. Historically therefore it has been deemed essential to create constitutional bodies that uphold and insist on adherence to certain ethical standards... If all these medical ethical bodies are to gain the respect of the public they should remain alert to intervene whenever these standards are threatened.

In Harlem, black was white. You had rights that could not be denied you; you had privileges, protected by law. And you had money. Everybody in Harlem had money. It was a land of plenty.

A lot of the appeal of internal medicine is Sherlockian—solving the case from the clues. We are detectives; we revel in the process of figuring it all out. It's what doctors most love to do.

These testimonies establish once and for all that we are not alone. Technologies related to extraterrestrial phenomena are capable of providing solutions to the global energy crisis, and other environmental and security challenges.

Steven M. Greer

The safest and most prudent of bets to lay money on is surprise. There is a very high probability that whatever astonishes us in biology today will turn out to be useable, and useful, tomorrow.

Every historic period has had its Cassandras. Our era is the first in which prophecies of doom stem from objective scientific analyses.

What thoughts are so important that it is worth holding on to them even when they make you miserable? Why are you holding on? You are in charge of your thoughts and feelings. If you are willing to search for the reason that you can't let go of disturbing thoughts, you can learn about yourself and restore your own peace of mind.

Bernie S. Siegel

What man does not ponder the whereabouts of his skeleton — the place where it will lie? Say what you will, all sanitary and pragmatic considerations aside, these jaunty saunterers that have held us upright, have stiffened us against the grate and grind of life, are dear to us. What stands closer to a man all his days than his bones?

Because until we write it down, we don't know what is actually at the root of our lives.

George A. Sheehan

Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise.

I recall the telegram I received at the time of our first Congress from an ordinary woman in Brooklyn. It was short: "Thank you on behalf of the children."
As adults we are obliged to avert transformation of the Earth from a flourishing planet into a heap of smoking ruins. Our duty is to hand it over to our successors in a better state than it was inherited by us. Therefore, it is not for fame, but for the happiness and for the future of all mothers and children that we — the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War — have worked, are working and will work.

Yevgeniy Chazov

Creativity and lateral thinking have exactly the same basis as humour.

In my experience, the more people have, the less likely they are to be contented. Indeed, there is abundant evidence that depression is a 'disease of affluence', a disorder of modern life in the industrialized world.

In regard to masturbation, I think that it is something that is a part of human sexuality and it's a part of something that perhaps should be taught. But we've not even taught our children the very basics. And I feel we have tried ignorance for a very long time and it's time we try education.

Joycelyn Elders

The Jewish people, no matter where they are, they become the best in the world.

As well as being one of the worst things that can happen to a human being, schizophrenia can also be one of the richest learning and humanizing experiences life offers.

If you knew that miracles could happen, what miracles would you wish for? If you knew that you could have it all and do anything you wanted, what would you choose to have and what would you choose to do?

She felt the familiar calmness of an emergency, but she understood the falseness of that feeling, now that it was her life at stake.

Abraham Verghese

The food you eat is among the most significant factors affecting your genes and pushing them toward cancer by causing mutation or disruption in their function. That is, what you eat can either prevent cancer and other chronic illnesses or help cause them.

Dharma Singh Khalsa

It is a blatant, open secret that this attack on the Twin Towers was done by George Bush himself.

In the culture I grew up in you did your work and you did not put your arm around it to stop other people from looking—you took the earliest possible opportunity to make knowledge available.

On modern scientific research