Alain de Botton Quotes

I have a reverence for medicine because I hero-worshiped my father [a former doctor], and because I admire doctors, I admire study, empiricism and rational thought. I don't study, empiricize or think rationally myself - but I admire it in others.

I do like books on anatomy. I have to say I'm an amateur physician, I guess.

Common sense is in medicine the master workman.

The bottom line to this is, there are few doctors who have any expertise in chemical exposure.

Walking is man's best medicine.

I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However, this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health.

Truth in all its kinds is most difficult to win; and truth in medicine is the most difficult of all.

I will follow my logic, no matter where it goes, after it has consulted with my heart. If you ever come to a conclusion without calling the heart in, you will come to a bad conclusion.

I shall tell my doctors baseball has more curative powers than all their medicine.

I think of the Dalai Lama as a doctor of the mind offering medicine and specific counsel and cures in the way a great doctor would.

Heart surgeons do not have the world's smallest egos: when you ask them to name the world's three leading practitioners, they never can remember the names of the other two.

Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims.

Physicians are in general the most amiable companions and the best friends, as well as the most learned men I know.

Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well...I am not aware of any other factor in medicine-not diet, not smoking, not exercise-that has a greater impact.

The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.

The American doctor possesses a combination of conservatism and... an eagerness to know what it is really all about, in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.

The less experienced a doctor is, the higher are his notions of professional dignity . . .

There are only two sorts of doctors; those who practise with their brains, and those who practise with their tongues.

What the hell do doctors know about exercise? Most of them know zero. You gotta push elderly people to failure like anybody else. Then the body responds.

I think anyone who works in medicine has superpowers.

The physician...is the flower (such as it is) of our civilization.

I read a lot of books for information, like doctor books, spy books. . . .

Women go after doctors like men go after models. They want someone with knowledge of the body. We just want the body.

Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.

First with the head, then with the heart.