The security provided by a long-held belief system, even when poorly founded, is a strong impediment to progress. General acceptance of a practice becomes the proof of its validity, though it lacks all other merit.

In my view, the lost art of listening and ignoring the patient as a human being is a quintessential failure of our health care.

We physicians have focused on the nuclear threat as the singular issue of our era. We are not indifferent to other human rights and hard-won civil liberties. But first we must be able to bequeath to our children the most fundamental of all rights, which preconditions all others the right to survival.

As long as we rationalize nuclear weapons as necessary in order to save American lives, then nuclear weapons will never be gotten rid of.

Some of life's biggest and most positive changes are propelled by mini conspiracies of a few well-meaning folks.

Do as much as possible for the patient, and as little as possible to the patient.

Once a new paradigm takes hold, its acceptance is extraordinarily rapid and one finds few who claim to have adhered to a discarded method.