41 William Osler Quotes

William Osler quotes

1. The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

2. The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.

3. The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and to beget.

4. We can only instill principles, put the student in the right path, give him method, teach him how to study, and early to discern between essentials and non-essentials.

5. We are here to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, Life.

6. Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine, and war; of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.

7. The master word [work]... is the open sesame to every portal, the great equalizer in the world, the true philosopher's stone which transmutes all the base metal of humanity into gold.

8. Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature-subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today...The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty.

9. My second fixed idea is the uselessness of men above sixty years of age, and the incalculable benefit it would be in commercial, political, and in professional life, if as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.

10. I have three personal ideals. One, to do the day's work well and not to bother about tomorrow...The second ideal has been to act the Golden Rule, as far as in me lay, toward my professional brethren and toward the patients committed to my care. And the third has been to cultivate such a measure of equanimity as would enable me to bear success with humility, the affection of my friends without pride, and to be ready when the day of sorrow and grief came to meet it with the courage befitting a man.

11. Nothing in life is more wonderful than faith-the one great moving force which we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in the crucible.

12. Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.

13. No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.

14. One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.

15. Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.

16. The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.

17. The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.

18. There are three classes of human beings: men, women and women physicians.

19. There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.

20. To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals - this alone is worth the struggle.

21. 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.

22. Variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease.

23. The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest.

1. As it can be maintained that all the great advances have come from men under forty, so the history of the world shows that a very large proportion of the evils may be traced to the sexagenarians, nearly all the great mistakes politically and socially, all of the worst poems, most of the bad pictures, a majority of the bad novels and not a few of the bad sermons and speeches.

2. No man is really happy or safe without a hobby ...

3. But whatever you do, take neither yourselves nor your fellow-creatures too seriously. There is tragedy enough in our daily routine, but there is room too for a keen sense of the absurdities and incongruities of life, and in the shifting panorama no one sees better than the doctor the perennial sameness of men’s ways.

4. Without egotism and full of feeling, laughter is the music of life.

5. The librarian of today, and it will be true still more of the librarians of tomorrow, are not fiery dragons interposed between the people and the books. They are useful public servants, who manage libraries in the interest of the public . . . Many still think that a great reader, or a writer of books, will make an excellent librarian. This is pure fallacy.

6. Throw away all ambition beyond that of doing the day's work well. The travelers on the road to success live in the present, heedless of taking thought for the morrow. Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your wildest ambition.

7. The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.

8. He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.

9. In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.

10. Shed, as you do your garments, your daily sins, whether of omission or commission, and you will wake a free man, with a new life.

11. Laughter is the music of life.

12. Beware of people who call you 'Doc.' They rarely pay their bills.

13. There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be familiar with their manifestations in many organs.

14. For the general practitioner a well-used library is one of the few correctives of the premature senility which is so apt to take him.

15. The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.

16. Medicine is learned by the bedside and not in the classroom. Let not your conceptions of disease come from words heard in the lecture room or read from the book. See, and then reason and compare and control. But see first.

17. Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.

18. Patients should have rest, food, fresh air, and exercise - the quadrangle of health.