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Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.

William Osler

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William Osler
Age: 70 †
Born: 1849
Born: July 12
Died: 1919
Died: December 29
Physician
Professor
Sir William Osler
Sir William
WO
Science
Art
Probability
Uncertainty
Medical
Medicine

More quotes by William Osler

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In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.
William Osler
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The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
William Osler
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If it were not for the great variability among individuals, medicine might as well be a science, not an art.
William Osler
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Start at once a bedside library and spend the last half hour of the day in communion with the saints of humanity.
William Osler
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Patients should have rest, food, fresh air, and exercise - the quadrangle of health.
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Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today ... The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty.
William Osler
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Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility.
William Osler
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Now the way of life that I preach is a habit to be acquired gradually by long and steady repetition. It is the practice of living for the day only, and for the day's work.
William Osler
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A physician who treats himself has a fool for a patient.
William Osler
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Things cannot always go your way. Learn to accept in silence the minor aggravations, cultivate the gift of taciturnity and consume your own smoke with an extra draught of hard work, so that those about you may not be annoyed with the dust and soot of your complaints.
William Osler
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The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.
William Osler
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We are constantly misled by the ease with which our minds fall into the ruts of one or two experiences
William Osler
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To confess ignorance is often wiser than to beat about the bush with a hypothetical diagnosis.
William Osler
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The great majority gave no signs one way or the other like birth, their death was a sleep and a forgetting.
William Osler
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The young doctor should look about early for an avocation, a pastime, that will take him away from patients, pills, and potions.
William Osler
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Care more for the individual patient than for the special features of the disease. . . . Put yourself in his place . . . The kindly word, the cheerful greeting, the sympathetic look - these the patient understands.
William Osler
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Conservatism and old fogeyism are totally different things the motto of one is Prove all things and hold fast that which is good and of the other Prove nothing but hold fast that which is old.
William Osler
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The true poetry of life: the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary man, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs.
William Osler
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The hardest conviction to get into the mind of a beginner is that the education upon which he is engaged is not a college course, not a medical course, but a life course, for which the work of a few years under teachers is but a preparation.
William Osler
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For the general practitioner a well-used library is one of the few correctives of the premature senility which is so apt to take him.
William Osler