William Osler

The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.

Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows.

The future belongs to Science. More and more she will control the destinies of the nations. Already she has them in her crucible and on her balances.

One special advantage of the skeptical attitude of mind is that a man is never vexed to find that after all he has been in the wrong.

The future is today.

Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than what sort of a disease a patient has.

The good physician treats the disease the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.

Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.