Echoes

To study the phenomenon of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.

Common sense in matters medical is rare, and is usually in inverse ratio to the degree of education.

The physician should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it.

The cure of many diseases is unknown to physicians of Hellas, because they are ignorant of the whole, which ought to be studied also; for the part can never be well unless the whole is well.

A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.

Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

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

I believe that the extraordinary should certainly be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.

The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided.

He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.

No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means.

It is important to distinguish between the amount of information and the quality of that information.

Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

This is a sharp Medicine, but it is a Physician for all Diseases and Miseries.

Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.

Man knows much more than he understands.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

I know that I know nothing.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.