Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.
– Sir William Osler
No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.
– Sir William Osler
Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants.
– Sir William Osler
The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.
– Sir William Osler
The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.
– Sir William Osler
The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.
– Sir William Osler
The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and to beget.
– Sir William Osler
To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals - this alone is worth the struggle.
– Sir William Osler
Variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease.
– Sir William Osler
We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it.
– Sir William Osler
Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
– Sir William Osler
Shut out all of your past except that which will help you weather your tomorrows.
– Sir William Osler
One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
– Sir William Osler
Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day's work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition.
– Sir William Osler
We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.
– Sir William Osler
There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.
– Sir William Osler
There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be familiar with their manifestations in many organs.
– Sir William Osler
The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it.
– Sir William Osler
The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.
– Sir William Osler
The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.
– Sir William Osler
The good physician treats the disease the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.
– Sir William Osler
The future is today.
– Sir William Osler
Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert.
– Sir William Osler
No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.
– Sir William Osler
In seeking absolute truth we aim at the unattainable and must be content with broken portions.