302 Quotes by Atul Gawande

As a person’s end draws near, there comes a moment when responsibility shifts to someone else to decide what to do.

Courage is strength in the face of knowledge of what is to be feared or hoped. Wisdom is prudent strength. At least two kinds of courage are required in aging and sickness. The first is the courage to confront the reality of mortality – the courage to seek out the truth of what is to be feared and what is to be hoped. Such courage is difficult enough. We have many reasons to shrink from it. But even more daunting is the second kind of courage – the courage to act on the truth we find.

The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one’s life – to avoid becoming so diminished or dissipated or subjugated that who you are becomes disconnected from who you were or who you want to be.

Even worse than losing self-confidence, though, is reacting defensively. There are surgeons who will see faults everywhere except in themselves. They have no questions and no fears about their abilities. As a result, they learn nothing from their mistakes and know nothing of their limitations. As one surgeon told me, it is a rare but alarming thing to meet a surgeon without fear. “If you’re not a little afraid when you operate,” he said, “you’re bound to do a patient a grave disservice.

As we medical students saw it, the failure of those around Ivan Ilyich to offer comfort or to acknowledge what is happening to him was a failure of character and culture.

A year on, Eleanor remained haunted by what happened to her. She still had no idea where the bacteria came from. Perhaps the foot soak and pedicure she had gotten at a small hair-and-nail shop the day before that wedding.

He moved his line in the sand. This is what it means to have autonomy – you may not control life’s circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them.

I never expected that among the most meaningful experiences I’d have as a doctor – and, really, as a human being – would come from helping others deal with what medicine cannot do as well as what it can. But it’s proved true, whether with a patient like Jewel Douglass, a friend like Peg Bachelder, or someone I loved as much as my father.

The simpler way to say it is that perspective matters.