9 Quotes by Denton Cooley

I've always felt that I did well as a student because I lacked confidence.

Of the many 'firsts' with which I have been involved at the Texas Heart Institute —including the first successful human heart transplant in the United States and the first total artificial heart transplant in the world—the achievement that may have the greatest impact on health care did not occur in the operating room or in the research laboratory. It happened on a piece of paper... when we created the first-ever packaged pricing plan for cardiovascular surgical procedures.

A successful surgeon should be a man who, when asked to name the three best surgeons in the world, would have difficulty deciding on the other two.

I find I’m luckier when I work harder.

Get a scalpel, and practice just, say, cutting a piece of meat or something like that. You sort of learn how you want to hold your fingers, and that sort of thing, and try to become graceful when you operate.

I still take failure very seriously, but I’ve found that the only way I could overcome the feeling is to keep on working, and trying to benefit from failures or disappointments. There are always some lessons to be learned. So I keep on working.

The spirit of Texas seems to pervade our everyday existence. Our desire is to be superlative, not only the largest, but also the best in the United States.

The man who inspired me most, I think, was Dr. Alfred Blalock, who was professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins. He was a rather simple man with a burning curiosity. It was through his curiosity that he made many real contributions to medical science.

I’ve always felt that I did well as a student because I lacked confidence.