241 Quotes by Paul Kalanithi

What kind of life exists without language?

If the hare makes too many missteps and has to keep adjusting, the tortoise wins. If the tortoise spends too much time planning each step, the hare wins.

When there's no place for the scalpel, words are the surgeon's only tool.

Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still, it is never complete.

Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job - not a calling.

I knew medicine only by its absence - specifically, the absence of a father growing up: one who went to work before dawn and returned in the dark to a plate of reheated dinner.

What patients seek is not scientific knowledge that doctors hide, but existential authenticity each person must find on her own... the angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability.

Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present.

During my sojourn in ironclad atheism, the primary arsenal leveled against Christianity had been its failure on empirical grounds. Surely, enlightened reason offered a more coherent cosmos. Surely, Occam's razor cut the faithful free from blind faith. There is no proof of God; therefore, it is unreasonable to believe in God.