If the unexamined life was not worth living, was the unlived life worth examining?
―Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
Tag: Quote
Years ago it had occurred to me that…
Years ago, it had occurred to me that Darwin and Nietzsche agreed on one thing: the defining characteristic of the organism is striving.
―Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
The physician’s duty is not to stave off…
The physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.
―Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
Science may provide the most useful way to…
Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.
―Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
Never forget and teach to your children that…
Never forget and teach to your children that as is the difference between a firefly and the blazing sun, between the infinite ocean and a little pond, between a mustard seed and the mountain Meru, such is the difference between the householder and the sannyasin!
Swami Vivekananda of the Puri order