50 Inspirational Quotes Every Medical Student Should Know

"Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown your own inner voice. Most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

- Steve Jobs

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do."

- Steve Jobs

"It is not how much we do, but how much love we put into doing it."

- Mother Teresa

"The greatest medicine of all is teaching people how not to need it."

- Hippocrates

"The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease."

- Voltaire

"The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease."

- William Osler

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do."

- Steve Jobs

"Believe you can and you’re halfway there."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose."

- Dr. Seuss

"The best way to predict your future is to create it."

- Peter Drucker

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts."

- Winston Churchill

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started."

- Mark Twain

"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

- Oliver Goldsmith

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

- Lao Tzu

"The physician’s highest calling, his only calling, is to make sick people healthy – to heal, as it is termed."

- Samuel Hahnemann

"The aim of medicine is to prevent disease and prolong life; the ideal of medicine is to eliminate the need of a physician."

- William J. Mayo

"To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all."

- William Osler

"Wherever the art of medicine is loved, there is also a love for humanity."

- Hippocrates

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The most essential factor is persistence—the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come."

- James Whitcomb Riley

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful."

- Albert Pujols

"The life so short, the craft so long to learn."

- Hippocrates

"Believe you can, and you’re halfway there."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"A doctor, like anyone else who has to deal with human beings, each of them unique, cannot be a scientist; he is either, like the surgeon, a craftsman, or, like the physician and the psychologist, an artist. This means that in order to be a good doctor a man must also have a good character, that is to say, whatever weaknesses and foibles he may have, he must love his fellow human beings in the concrete and desire their good before his own."

- W. H. Auden

"The doctor of the future will give no medicine but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease."

- Thomas Edison

"Always remember the privilege it is to be a physician."

- Daniel P. Logan

"To array a man’s will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine."

- Henry Ward Beecher

"Let me congratulate you on the choice of calling which offers a combination of intellectual and moral interests found in no other profession."

- Sir William Olser

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."

- Leo Tolstoy

"He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Medicine is an art whose magic and creative ability have long been recognized as residing in the interpersonal aspects of the patient-physician relationship."

- Francis Weld Peabody

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Medicines cure diseases, but only doctors can cure patients."

- Carl Jung

"Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is."

- Norman Cousins

"In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity."

- Albert Einstein

"The most exquisite pleasure in the practice of medicine comes from nudging a layman in the direction of terror, then bringing him back to safety again."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"You have to be odd to be number 1."

- Dr. Seuss

"Medicine is a science of uncertainty and the art of probability."

- William Osler

"Nurses serve their patients in the most important capacities. We know that they serve as our first lines of communication when something goes wrong or when we are concerned about health."

- Lois Capps

"Each patient carries his own doctor inside him."

- Norman Cousins

"The art of medicine was to be properly learned only from its practice and its exercise."

- Thomas Sydenham

"Sometimes, the best thing we can do for our patients is to tell them what the best behavior is and then negotiate something they can live with."

- Nancy Dickey

"People pay the doctor for his trouble; for his kindness they still remain in his debt."

- Seneca

"Medicine is only for those who cannot imagine doing anything else."

- Luanda Grazette

"The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity."

- Arthur Schopenhauer

"You can’t judge the ability of a doctor by the amount of praise the undertakers give him."

- Evan Esar

"Though fancy may be the patient’s complaint, necessity is often the doctor’s."

- Zimmermann

"Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better."

"You don’t have to be brilliant to be a doctor. You have to be hardworking and have good character. That’s what makes good doctors."

"The harder you’ll work for something, the greater you will feel when you’ll achieve it."

"If you aren’t willing to keep looking for light in the darkest of places without stopping even when it seems impossible, you will never succeed."

"Study hard until you can say “I am a doctor” everything is gonna be alright."

"Never give up on practising medicine, for that is the place and time when the tide will turn."

"Study to save lives."

"The chapter you are learning today is going to save someone’s life tomorrow. Pay attention."

"Failure is not fatal, and success is not final: it is the courage to continue that counts."

"I want to experience the most beautiful adrenaline rush of my life. A rush while taking medical pledge/oath."

"The power of a female doctor lies in her resilience and determination."

"Do your best. One day, you will be someone’s hero."

"Be like the stem cell, differentiate yourself from others."

"The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little ‘extra’."

"Only a doctor can teach how to love life."

"Behind every fine doctor, there is always a nurse."

"Only the healing art enables one to make a name for himself and at the same time give benefit to others."

"The moment you doubt you can fly, you forever cease to be able to do it."

"I did it sounds way better than I could’ve done it."

"Not all angels have wings, some have stethoscopes."

"The presence of the doctor is the beginning of the cure."