Hippocrates Quotes

79 Sourced Quotes

Men ought to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joy, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs, and tears.

Hippocrates
Idleness and lack of occupation tend—nay are dragged—towards evil.

Hippocrates
Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption; and, further from the seduction of females or males, of freemen and slaves.

Hippocrates
Time is that wherein there is opportunity, and opportunity is that wherein there is no great time. Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity. However, knowing this, one must attend to medical practice not primarily to plausible theories, but to experience combined with reason. For a theory is a composite memory of things apprehended with sense perception.

Hippocrates
Medicine is the most distinguished of all the arts, but through the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who casually judge such practitioners, it is now of all the arts by far the least esteemed.

Hippocrates
I am about to discuss the disease called 'sacred' It is not, in my opinion, any more divine or more sacred that other diseases, but has a natural cause, and its supposed divine origin is due to men's inexperience, and to their wonder at its peculiar character.

Hippocrates
A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

Hippocrates
The physician must have at his command a certain ready wit, as dourness is repulsive both to the healthy and the sick.

Hippocrates
The forms of diseases are many and the healing of them is manifold.

Hippocrates
The body of man has in itself blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile; these make up the nature of this body, and through these he feels pain or enjoys health. Now he enjoys the most perfect health when these elements are duly proportioned to one another in respect of compounding, power and bulk, and when they are perfectly mingled.

Hippocrates
Any man who is intelligent must, on considering that health is of the utmost value to human beings, have the personal understanding necessary to help himself in diseases, and be able to understand and to judge what physicians say and what they administer to his body, being versed in each of these matters to a degree reasonable for a layman.

Hippocrates
All parts of the body which have a function, if used in moderation and exercised in labors in which each is accustomed, become thereby healthy, well developed and age more slowly, but if unused they become liable to disease, defective in growth and age quickly.

Hippocrates
Those diseases which medicines do not cure, iron cures; those which iron cannot cure, fire cures; and those which fire cannot cure, are to be reckoned wholly incurable.

Hippocrates
The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future — must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm.

Hippocrates
In autumn, diseases are most acute, and most mortal, on the whole. The spring is most healthy, and least mortal.

Hippocrates
And he will manage the cure best who has foreseen what is to happen from the present state of matters.

Hippocrates
Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand.

Hippocrates
There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Hippocrates
It is time which imparts strength to all things and brings them to maturity.

Hippocrates
I swear by Apollo the physician, by Asclepius, by Health, by Panacea and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgement, this oath and this indenture.

Hippocrates
For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable.

Hippocrates
I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.

Hippocrates
Declare the past,
diagnose the present,
foretell the future.

Hippocrates
I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgement, but never with a view to injury or wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.

Hippocrates
I have clearly recorded this: for one can learn good lessons also from what has been tried but clearly has not succeeded, when it is clear why it has not succeeded.

Hippocrates