Quotes from Doctors

Erich Segal ·  688 pages

Rating: (12.2K votes)


“The ‘equilibrium’ that people see in me is really an illusion. I am as flawed as anyone. It’s only that I seem to have the knack of hiding.”
― Erich Segal, quote from Doctors


“although science could pinpoint the exact spot in the brain that ignites rage, they had yet to identify the location that produces love.”
― Erich Segal, quote from Doctors


“We have turned doctors into gods and worship their deity by offering up our bodies and our souls - not to mention our worldly goods.
And yet paradoxically, they are the most vulnerable of human beings. Their suicide rate is eight times the national average. Their percentage of drug addiction is one hundred times higher
And because they are painfully aware that they cannot live up to our expectations, their anguish is unquantifiably intense. They have aptly been called 'wounded healers.' "

~ Barney Livingston, M.D.”
― Erich Segal, quote from Doctors


“He had spent most of his lifetime studying the art of medicine and realized now that he would never really understand its mysteries.
For medicine is an eternal quest for reasons - causes that explain effects.
Science cannot comprehend a miracle.”
― Erich Segal, quote from Doctors


“Deep down I'm still afraid, but at least I can deal with it.”
― Erich Segal, quote from Doctors



“I urge you to engrave this on the template of your memories: there are thousands of diseases in this world, but Medical Science only has an empirical cure for twenty-six of them. The rest is … guesswork.”
― Erich Segal, quote from Doctors


“a real physician almost never seeks another doctor’s help. For they all are painfully aware of just how little anybody understands about curing the sick.”
― Erich Segal, quote from Doctors


About the author

Erich Segal
Born place: in Brooklyn, New York, The United States
Born date June 16, 1937
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Popular quotes

“The science tells us that obesity is ultimately the result of a hormonal imbalance, not a caloric one—specifically, the stimulation of insulin secretion caused by eating easily digestible, carbohydrate-rich foods: refined carbohydrates, including flour and cereal grains, starchy vegetables such as potatoes, and sugars, like sucrose (table sugar) and high-fructose corn syrup. These carbohydrates literally make us fat, and by driving us to accumulate fat, they make us hungrier and they make us sedentary.”
― quote from Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It


“A humorous treatment of the rigid uniformitarian view came from Mark Twain. Although the shortening of the Mississippi River he referred to was the result of engineering projects eliminating many of the bends in the river, it is a thought-provoking spoof:
The Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago. . . . Its length is only nine hundred and seventy-three miles at present.
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and “let on” to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past . . . what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! . . .
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. . . . There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Life on the Mississippi


“Her little fists pummeled at him, and he accepted the abuse. Until he realized she’d made an improper fist and was actually hurting herself. He wound an arm around her waist, spun her and slammed her into the hard line of his body to still her.
“Let me go!”
“In a minute.” As she struggled, he pulled her thumb out from beneath her fingers and rearranged her fist. “Hit like this.” Done, he released her.”
― Gena Showalter, quote from The Darkest Seduction


“I had an action figure that did that,” Graham nodded. “I tried to use it on my mum, once. Got me in no end of Barney.”
― G. Norman Lippert, quote from James Potter and the Curse of the Gatekeeper


“Giving up on something is like admitting you never wanted it in the first place.”
― Elizabeth Norris, quote from Unbreakable


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