Quote

I always wondered if the good people who send us bibles really think that hookworm and hunger are healed by scripture? Our patients are illiterate.

Abraham Verghese

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Abraham Verghese
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: January 1
Physician
University Teacher
Writer
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Think
Wondered
Thinking
Scripture
People
Send
Hunger
Patient
Bibles
Really
Illiterate
Good
Patients
Always
Healed

More quotes by Abraham Verghese

Image
We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.
Abraham Verghese
Image
The only way to know where you are is by where you have just been.
Abraham Verghese
Image
You are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can can play the 'Gloria'? No, not Bach's 'Gloria.' Yours! Your 'Gloria' lives within you. The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you.
Abraham Verghese
Image
I joke, but I only half joke, that if you come to one of our hospitals missing a limb, no one will believe you till they get a CAT scan, MRI, or orthopedic consult.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be. I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around but he carried it off so well.
Abraham Verghese
Image
The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.
Abraham Verghese
Image
She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life... As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Being the first born gives you great patience.
Abraham Verghese
Image
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
Image
Your job is to preserve yourself, not to descend into their hole. It's a relief when you arrive at this place, the point of absurdity, because then you are free, you owe them nothing.
Abraham Verghese
Image
Though I am fascinated by knowledge, I am even more fascinated by wisdom.
Abraham Verghese
Image
We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
Abraham Verghese
Image
The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.
Abraham Verghese
Image
In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we 'battle' cancer we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation. If we are fortunate, we 'beat' the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having 'succumbed after a long battle.'
Abraham Verghese
Image
Literature is a beautiful way of keeping the imagination alive, of visiting worlds you would never have time to in your day-to-day life. It keeps you abreast of a wider spectrum of human activities.
Abraham Verghese
Image
I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient it's only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.
Abraham Verghese
Image
For one who has an interest in the body as text, airports are treasure troves of information. It seems almost un-American to enjoy delays, and perhaps enjoy is not the best word, but certainly a delayed flight, if it does nothing else, allows one the opportunity to make prolonged observations about one's fellow travelers.
Abraham Verghese
Image
We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine.
Abraham Verghese
Image
My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.
Abraham Verghese
Image
I'm a great believer in geography being destiny.
Abraham Verghese