The march of the human mind is slow.
—Edmund Burke, 1775
Archive
Quotes
We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.
—Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, 1969Death keeps no calendar.
—George Herbert, 1640The more religious a country is, the more crimes are committed in it.
—Napoleon Bonaparte, 1817Fear is the foundation of most governments.
—John Adams, 1776Far water cannot quench near fire.
—Japanese proverbThe brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.
—Victor Hugo, 1862Because the newer methods of treatment are good, it does not follow that the old ones were bad: for if our honorable and worshipful ancestors had not recovered from their ailments, you and I would not be here today.
—Confucius, c. 515 BCThe believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature—and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878When they shout “Long live progress,” always ask, “Progress of what?”
—Stanisław Jerzy Lec, 1957God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
—John Lennon, 1970The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
—Sigmund Freud, 1912Some men never recover from education.
—Oliver St. John Gogarty, 1954