“Medicine is an art, and attends to the nature and constitution of the patient and has principles of action and reason in each case.” – Plato [427?-347 B.C]

“Life is short, and the Art long; the occasion fleeting; experience fallacious and, judgment difficult.”
– Hippocrates [460?-337? B.C.]

“…I will keep this Oath and stipulation – to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents.”
– Hippocrates (460?-377? B.C.)

“The art of medicine was to be properly learned only from its practice and its exercise.” – Thomas Sydenham [1624-1689]

“The medical student may be sometimes a rough diamond; but when he comes to have personal charge of patients, and to have the life and health of a fellow-creature depending on his individual care, he becomes a changed man, and from that day forth his life becomes a constant exercise of beneficence.” – Joseph, Lord Lister (1827-1912)

“How does one learn to devote oneself unsparingly to one’s patients? You cannot get this from books or from formal clinical instruction. It is something which is passed on from one generation of doctors to the next, and the easiest way to acquire it is to work with a doctor who already has it in his blood.”  – Sir Hugh Cairns (1896-1952)