quotations about doctors
My doctor gave me six months to live, but when I couldn't pay the bill he gave me six months more.
WALTER MATTHAU
Forbes Magazine, 1999
Doctors? Those Muggle nutters that cut people up?
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Tidy fees are the most effective remedy, both for the doctor and the patient.
DARIO FO
Accidental Death of an Anarchist
The most exquisite pleasure in the practice of medicine comes from nudging a layman in the direction of terror, then bringing him back to safety again.
KURT VONNEGUT
God Bless You
Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered.
LEO TOLSTOY
War and Peace
You can't judge the ability of a doctor by the amount of praise the undertakers give him.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Physicians of the Utmost Fame
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
"There is no Cure for this Disease."
HILAIRE BELLOC
"Henry King, Who Chewed Bits of String, and Was Early Cut off in Dreadful Agonies", Cautionary Tales for Children
Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the culprit--life!
EMILY DICKINSON
Surgeons must be very careful
To restrict the art of healing to doctors and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic.
BENJAMIN RUSH
Homeopathic World, 1947
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
JONATHAN SWIFT
Polite Conversation
An apple a day keeps the doctor away. So does not having health insurance.
JOE HICKMAN
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Zingers
A wealthy doctor who can help a poor man, and will not without a fee, has less sense of humanity than a poor ruffian, who kills a rich man to supply his necessities.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Tatler, Oct. 8, 1709
Few people outside medicine realize that what tortures doctors most is uncertainty, rather than the fact they often deal with people who are suffering or who are about to die. It is easy enough to let somebody die if one knows beyond doubt that they cannot be saved -- if one is a decent doctor one will be sympathetic, but the situation is clear. This is life, and we all have to die sooner or later. It is when I do not know for certain whether I can help or not, or should help or not, that things become so difficult.
HENRY MARSH
Do No Harm
Physician, heal thyself.
BIBLE
Luke 4:23
I've been poked and prodded in places I'd always prided myself on keeping untouched for that one special doctor who gives me a ring and a promise someday.
LIBBY BRAY
Going Bovine
Where there's a doctor it's always a bad sign. Even when they are not doing the killing themselves it means a death is close, and in that way they are like ravens or crows.
MARGARET ATWOOD
Alias Grace
God heals and the doctor takes the fees.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1736
Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.
VOLTAIRE
attributed, The Complete Toastmaster: A New Treasury for Speakers
Doctors put a wall up between themselves and their patients; nurses broke it down.
JODI PICOULT
Nineteen Minutes
It's kinda scary when a doctor asks your price range!
TOM WILSON
Ziggy, Mar. 26, 1998