I did not compose my work as one might put on a church vestment. . . rather it sprung from the truly fervent faith of my heart, such as I have felt it since my childhood.
Science is a tribute to what we can know, although we are fallible.
The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her.
Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals, so that unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape, he is the shaper of the landscape.
That series of inventions by which man from age to age has remade his environment is a different kind of evolution -- not biological, but cultural evolution. . . "The Ascent of Man.
The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well. And having done it well, he loves to do it better.
Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.
I have such an extreme attitude about work, where I can just completely be derelict of my responsibilities and then when I am not derelict, I am completely indulged in it. I swing pretty wildly from the two extremes.
And still everything’s the same, even though I did my best to get as far away as I could.
Without question, the notion of the doctor as a legitimate fee-for-service entrepreneur, making his fortune from misfortunes of his patients, is old-fashioned, distasteful, and doomed.