Quotes by Atul Gawande

“Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you.”

“There is a saying about surgeons, meant as a reproof: "Sometimes wrong; never in doubt." But this seemed to me their strength. Each day surgeons are faced with uncertainties. Information is inadequ...”

“The core predicament of medicine - the thing that makes being a patient so wrenching, being a doctor so difficult, and being a part of society that pays the bills they run up so vexing - is uncerta...”

“The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, and that is, of course, its most basic task. Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And, in ...”

“The possibilities and probabilities are all we have to work with in medicine, though. What we are drawn to in this imperfect science, what we in fact covet in our way, is the alterable moment-the f...”

“We want progress in medicine to be clear and unequivocal, but of course it rarely is. Every new treatment has gaping unknowns - for both patients and society - and it can be hard to decide what do ...”

“If there is a credo in practical medicine, it is that the important thing is to be sensible.”

“Are doctors who make mistakes villains? No, because then we all are.”

“The striking thing is that WHO doesn't really have the authority to do any of this. It can't tell governments what to do. It hires no vaccinators, distributes no vaccine. It is a small Geneva burea...”

“People seemed to have two different selves—an experiencing self who endures every moment equally and a remembering self who gives almost all the weight of judgment afterward to two single points in...”

“All involve risk, uncertainty, and complexity — and therefore steps that are worth committing to a checklist and testing in routine care. Good checklists could become as important as doctors and nu...”

“You don’t have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal illness to see how often medicine fails the people it is supposed to help. The waning days of our lives are given over to t...”