Atul Gawande citations

“Don’t let yourself be. Find something new to try, something to change. Count how often it succeeds and how often it doesn’t. Write about it. Ask a patient or a colleague what they think about it. See if you can keep the conversation going.”

“Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.”

“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.”

“Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end.”

“how we seek to spend our time may depend on how much time we perceive ourselves to have.”

“Practice is funny that way. For days and days, you make out only the fragments of what to do. And then one day you've got the thing whole. Conscious learning becomes unconscious knowledge, and you cannot say precisely how.”

“We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being.”

“Courage is strength in the face of knowledge of what is to be feared or hoped. Wisdom is prudent strength.”

“We recruit for attitude and train for skill”

“Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you.”

“Man is fallible, but maybe men are less so.”

“Culture has tremendous inertia,” he said. “That’s why it’s culture. It works because it lasts. Culture strangles innovation in the crib.”