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Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion.

Abraham Verghese

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Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Dynamic
Proportion
Ignorance
Grew
Knowledge

More quotes by Abraham Verghese

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Rituals, anthropologists will tell us, are about transformation. The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.
Abraham Verghese
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My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual.
Abraham Verghese
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You live it forward, but understand it backward.
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The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
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He was teaching me how to die, just as he'd taught me how to live.
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Another day in paradise' was his inevitable pronouncement when he settled his head on his pillow. Now I understand what that meant: the uneventful day was a precious gift.
Abraham Verghese
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Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted
Abraham Verghese
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I think America is really in denial about the degree to which residents, particularly foreign medical graduates, man the county hospitals of this country, and but for their services, I'm not sure how exactly we could manage.
Abraham Verghese
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There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-
Abraham Verghese
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What did it say when a man had fewer clothes than books?
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I'm a great believer in geography being destiny.
Abraham Verghese
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God will judge us, Mr. Harris, by--by what we did to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings. I don't think God cares what doctrine we embrace.
Abraham Verghese
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The most important innovation in medicine to come in the next 10 years: the power of the human hand.
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The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.
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To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.
Abraham Verghese
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We know the average American physician interrupts their patient in 14 seconds.
Abraham Verghese
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What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it. The process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialised language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve empathy can be replaced by cynicism.
Abraham Verghese
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How we treat the least of our brethren,... that's the measure of this country.
Abraham Verghese
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The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.
Abraham Verghese
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There are moments as a teacher when I'm conscious that I'm trotting out the same exact phrase my professor used with me years ago. It's an eerie feeling, as if my old mentor is not just in the room, but in my shoes, using me as his mouthpiece.
Abraham Verghese