Favorite aphorisms, adages, sayings and quotes – (mostly learned, a few made up) – collected over many years …
aphorism: a terse saying embodying a universal truth or astute observation.
adage: a traditional saying expressing a common experience or observation.
saying: something said, especially a proverb or apothegm.
apothegm: a short, pithy instructive saying; a terse remark or aphorism.
quotation: something that is quoted.
quote: to repeat (a passage, phrase, etc.) from a book, speech, or the like.
Always take the high road.
Do it now, it won’t get easier later.
Think logically, it’s almost always the best way.
Patience.
You have to ask for what you want. No one can read your mind.
Don’t worry about things you can’t control.
You get what you give.
… as we age, the weight of our unsorted baggage becomes heavier … much heavier. (Bruce Springsteen)
We are each responsible for our own happiness. (Pamela Kirst, Ph.D.)
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. (Eleanor Roosevelt)
Do more than expected, it’s always easier to cut back than to add.
There is almost always another explanation for everything.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics. (Benjamin Disraeli)
La théorie c’est bon, mais ça n’empêche pas d’exister [the theory is good, but that doesn’t mean it’s true]. (Charcot)
Thinking is better than knowing, but seeing is better still. (Goethe)
If you’re going to tell a lie, take notes.
Going to medical school doesn’t qualify you to judge people, you need law school for that.
Hoof-beats usually mean horses, not zebras; common things occur commonly.
A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine. (Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, 19th C gastronome)
When a man tires of London, he tires of life. (Samuel Johnson)
There’s no such thing as ‘free.’ (Fannie Podberesky, my grandmother)
You pay cheap, you get cheap. (Fannie Podberesky)
When they say it’s not the money, it’s the money. (Fannie Podberesky)
Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don’t feel like doing them. (Julius Irving)
Life is not about winning. Life is about doing your best when your best is needed. (John Wooden)
It’s better to walk alone than with a crowd going in the wrong direction. (Diane Grant)
Linus: I guess it’s wrong to always be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe we should only think about today.
Charlie Brown: No, that’s giving up. I’m still hoping that yesterday will get better. (Charles Schulz)
A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives. (Jackie Robinson)
No one who is insensitive to poetry and song can have a respect for learning, and no one who has no respect for learning can have real respect for justice, and no one who does not respect justice can, in fact, manifest a true love for his country. (Eugene McCarthy)
Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain. (John F. Kennedy)
For pathologists:
When you go to the movies, the room isn’t light blue, it’s black. When you take a photograph of a specimen, use a black background.
It’s the specimen that counts, not the background.
Cancer criminal, not obey laws. (Sadao Otani, M.D., my teacher)
The best diagnostic tool (for a pathologist) is a microscope connected to the brain. (Hans Popper, M.D., Ph.D., my teacher)
You can train dogs and cats, you can even train surgeons and gynecologists, but you have to teach pathologists. (Paul Klemperer, M.D.)
Life is messy. (Pamela Kirst, Ph.D.)
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seemed invincible, but in the end, they always fall – think of it, always. (Mahatma Gandhi)
… in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart… (Anne Frank)
… the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated. (Eliza Doolittle/George Bernard Shaw)
There is but one thing of real value: to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men. (Marcus Aurelius)
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. (Blaise Pascal)
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church. (Thomas Paine)
The atheist staring from the attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God. (Martin Buber)
Waving his arm around, when asked if he goes to a temple or church: A hospital is my temple. (Nathan B. Friedman, M.D.)
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. (Thomas Jefferson)
Tzedek, tzedek tirdof [justice, justice shall you pursue]. (Deuteronomy)
The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil: but because of the people who don’t do anything about it. (Angela Clemente)
A teacher affects eternity, he (she) can never tell where his influence stops. (slightly modified from Henry Adams)
To open the mind and the heart of youth, to induce tolerance, fairness and understanding, that is the primary goal of education. (Felix Friedberg, Ph.D., biochemist, my teacher)
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. (William Butler Yeats)
When you learn, teach. When you get, give. (Maya Angelou)
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. (Harry Truman)
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. (Albert Einstein)
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. (Sherlock Holmes/Arthur Conan Doyle)
The tension between standing apart and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer. That is where we begin. (Nadine Gordimer)
Writing is not an act of creation, it is an act of choice. (Barry Kemp)
Amateurs look for inspiration. I just get up and go to work. (Chuck Close)
There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real. (James Salter)
Becoming a writer is not a ‘career decision’ like becoming a doctor or a policemen. You don’t choose it so much as get chosen, and once you accept the fact that you are not fit for anything else, you have to be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your days. (Paul Auster)
I don’t judge people based on race, creed, color or gender. I judge people based on spelling, grammar, punctuation and sentence structure.
I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. (Clarence Darrow)
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is left to us. (Gandalf/Tolkien)
You retire, you die. (Hans Popper, M.D., Ph.D., my teacher – who, productive to the end, had dozens of scientific papers published in the year after he died at age 85)
Do not squander time, that is the stuff life is made of. (on the wall at Tara/Gone with the Wind/Margaret Mitchell)
Against the ruin of the world, there is only one defense: the creative act. (Kenneth Rexroth)
There are so many songs in me that won’t be sung. (Charles Aznavour)
Favorite poems:
April 16, 2019 at 9:15 pm
We train seals. We educate physicians.
—Leon Ginsburg
April 16, 2019 at 9:16 pm
SpellCheck erroneously changed Ginzburg to Ginsburg.
April 16, 2019 at 9:17 pm
Thanks, Stephan. I enjoyed it.
April 16, 2019 at 10:16 pm
“When in doubt, be honest” Robt S Stone, Founding Chair of Pathology and Former Dean, University of New Mexico School of Medicine
“Define and Prioritize Your Own objectives, It is impossible to know where you are going without clear written objectives… and don’t be overly cautious in defining them. If you don’t, your environment will do it for you”. Robert Anderson, Chair of the Department of Pathology, University of New Mexico, School of Medicine.
April 16, 2019 at 11:50 pm
If you are going to say something, say it with confidence. (Stephen A. Geller M.D., my teacher).
April 17, 2019 at 12:09 am
Two of my favorites:
It’s not over until it’s over -Yogi Berra
Don’t worry about there is to worry about until you know exactly what it is to be worried about -Werner Erhard
April 17, 2019 at 3:56 pm
“You are a pathologist, say what you see, not what it *appears* to be.” Stephen A. Geller (with a threat to dock pay for every time the word “appears” shows up in my reports.
“Does this liver really resemble this nutmeg?” Stephen A. Geller (while producing a cut nutmeg from his pocket, worn smooth from years of living there)
April 20, 2019 at 5:29 pm
“Melanoma – the great mimicker, the syphilis of tumors.”
– David Martin-Reay, MD, dermatopathologist
April 21, 2019 at 5:05 pm
You are your tomorrow, work for it today!
“`a school moto