Quotes about surgery (80 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I suppose nowadays it's all a question of surgery, isn't it? Of course the notion is beautiful, the idea of staying a boy and a child forever, and I think you can. I have known plenty of people who, in their later years, had the energy of children and the kind of curiosity and fascination with things like little children. I think we can keep that, and I think it's important to keep that part of staying young. But I also think it's great fun growing old.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Children , People , Beauty , Boy

Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician

Hippocrates - The Physician 14, as translated by Paul Potter, Loeb Classical Library, Hippocrates Volume VIII.
Context: Related to this is the surgery of wounds arising in military service, which concerns the extraction of missiles. In city practice experience of these is but little, for very rarely even in a whole lifetime are there civil or military combats. In fact such things occur most frequently and continuously in armies abroad. Thus, the person intending to practice this kind of surgery must serve in the army, and accompany it on expeditions abroad; for in this way he would become experienced in this practice.

“But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that's not making anybody's mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know and your mom know, that you know what, maybe this isn't going to help, maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.

And those kinds of decisions between doctors and patients, and making sure that our incentives are not preventing those good decisions and that the doctors and hospitals all are aligned for patient care — that's something we can achieve.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2009-06-24
Questions for the President: Prescription for America
ABC News
TV
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCare/story?id=7920012
2009

Moms , Decision , Help

“Of the complete biological inferiority of the negro there can be no question—he has anatomical features consistently varying from those of other stocks, & always in the direction of the lower primates... Equally inferior—& perhaps even more so—is the Australian black stock, which differs widely from the real negro... In dealing with these two black races, there is only one sound attitude for any other race (be it white, Indian, Malay, Polynesian, or Mongolian) to take—& that is to prevent admixture as completely & determinedly as it can be prevented, through the establishment of a colour-line & the rigid forcing of all mixed offspring below that line. I am in accord with the most vehement & vociferous Alabaman or Mississippian on that point … Other racial questions are wholly different in nature—involving wide variations unconnected with superiority or inferiority. Only an ignorant dolt would attempt to call a Chinese gentleman—heir to one of the greatest artistic & philosophic traditions in the world—an "inferior" of any sort... & yet there are potent reasons, based on wide physical, mental, & cultural differences, why great numbers of the Chinese ought not to mix into the Caucasian fabric, or vice versa. It is not that one race is any better than any other, but that their whole respective heritages are so antipodal as to make harmonious adjustment impossible. Members of one race can fit into another only through the complete eradication of their own background-influences—& even then the adjustment will always remain uneasy & imperfect if the newcomer's physical aspect froms a constant reminder of his outside origin. Therefore it is wise to discourage all mixtures of sharply differentiated races—though the color-line does not need to be drawn as strictly as in the case of the negro, since we know that a dash or two of Mongolian or Indian or Hindoo or some such blood will not actually injure a white stock biologically.... As a matter of fact, most of the psychological race-differences which strike us so prominently are cultural rather than biological. If one could take a Japanese infant, alter his features to the Anglo-Saxon type through plastic surgery, & place him with an American family in Boston for rearing—without telling him that he is not an American—the chances are that in 20 years the result would be a typical American youth with very few instincts to distinguish him from his pure Nordic college-mates. The same is true of other superior alien races including the Jew—although the Nazis persist in acting on a false biological conception. If they were wise in their campaign to get rid of Jewish cultural influences (& a great deal can be said for such a campaign, when the dominance of the Aryan tradition is threatened as in Germany & New York City), they would not emphasize the separatism of the Jew but would strive to make him give up his separate culture & lose himself in the German people. It wouldn't hurt Germany—or alter its essential physical type—to take in all the Jews it now has.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

However, that wouldn't work in Poland or New York City, where the Jews are of an inferior strain, & so numerous that they would essentially modify the physical type.
Letter to Natalie H. Wooley (22 November 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 77
Non-Fiction, Letters

People , Youth , World , Family

“As an aesthetic surgeon, one simply knows a difficult or dangerous or unhappy patient when one sees one. This learned response to the difficult patient places the surgeon in the position of the psychiatrist. The history of aesthetic surgery runs remarkably parallel to that of psychoanalysis as well as psychosomatic medicine.”

Sander Gilman (1944) American historian

page 14.
Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul (1998)

History , Learning

“The operation itself is the social act that enabled the patient to come to terms with the immutability of his Jewish body. No matter what is done, the body will reveal itself to be that of a Jew. This crushing realization drives the patient beyond medicine for therapy. He eventually breaks with his racial-religious identity and converts to Catholicism, the ultimate form of passing in Catholic Vienna. Aesthetic surgery did not cure the patient of his Jewishness, it only masked it. Baptism became the answer….”

Sander Gilman (1944) American historian

page 118.
Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul (1998)

“The problem with aging is not that it’s one damn thing after another—it’s every damn thing, all at once, all the time.
You can’t stop aging. Gene therapies and replacement organs and plastic surgery give it a good fight. But it catches up with you anyway. Get a new lung, and your heart blows a valve. Get a new heart, and your liver swells up to the size of an inflatable kiddie pool. Change out your liver, a stroke gives you a whack. That’s aging’s trump card; they still can’t replace brains.”

John Scalzi (1969) American science fiction writer

Source: Old Man’s War (2005), Chapter 1 (p. 14)

Age , Problem , Change , Time

“What happens when everyone in a society is finally beautiful (and healthy)? When the final aesthetic surgery is developed that will make all visages and bodies "perfect"? Will everyone in that society be happy? In examining the discourses of the late nineteenth century on this question, we are confronted with the paradox of François Xavier Bichat, as paraphrased by Charles Darwin: "If everyone were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici (de Milo), we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characters a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.””

Sander Gilman (1944) American historian

The very search for the improvement of the body (and the concomitant “happiness” of the psyche) must lead to further discontent.
page 39.
Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul (1998)

Women , Beauty , Search , Question

“Quite collected at cocktail parties,
meanwhile in my head
I'm undergoing open-heart surgery.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Variant: Meanwhile in my head, I’m undergoing open-heart surgery.
Source: Transformations

Heart

“Cosmetic surgery processes the bodies of woman-made women, who make up the vast majority of its patient pool, into man-made women.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth

Women

“I'm not sure what I am anymore… Sometimes I think I'm nothing but what other people have done to me―a big collection of brainwashing, surgeries, and cures… That, and all the mistakes I've made. All the people I've disappointed.”

Scott Westerfeld book Specials

Source: Specials

People , Disappointment , Thinking

“I've had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

On her plastic surgeries, quoted in The New York Times, 2008 (republished in The New York Daily News http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/joan-rivers-top-10-jokes-celebs-plastic-surgery-article-1.1928398#ixzz3CWeoRaTP

“The act of love strongly resembles torture or surgery.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

L’amour ressemblait fort à une torture ou à une opération chirurgicale.
III http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Fus%C3%A9es#III
Journaux intimes (1864–1867; published 1887), Fusées (1867)

Love

“There is an appreciated substance to the phrase "ALGOL-like" which is often used in arguments about programming, languages and computation. ALGOL appears to be a durable model, and even flourishes under surgery — be it explorative, plastic, or amputative.”

Alan Perlis (1922–1990) American computer scientist

The Synthesis of Algorithmic Systems, 1966

Appearance

“He had shoulder surgery on his elbow.”

Lou Holtz (1937) American college football coach, professional football coach, television sports announcer

Attributed by Ben Weiximann, "Top 15 Funniest Lou Holtz Quotes" http://bleacherreport.com/articles/59377-top-15-funniest-lou-holtz-quotes/, TheBleacherReport.com. Also see "Say What??? ESPN Broadcaster... a little confused..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJdReMOwma8.
Attributed

“Minor surgery is surgery that someone else is having”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

Teaching the Pig to Dance

“The American people have been offered two lousy choices. One, which is corporatism, a fascist type of approach, or, socialism. We deliver a lot of services in this country through the free market, and when you do it through the free market prices go down. But in medicine, prices go up. Technology doesn't help the cost, it goes up instead of down. But if you look at almost all of our industries that are much freer, technology lowers the prices. Just think of how the price of cell phones goes down. Poor people have cell phones, and televisions, and computers. Prices all go down. But in medicine, they go up, and there's a reason for that, that's because the government is involved with it… I do [think that prices will go down without government involvement], but probably a lot more than what you're thinking about, because you have to have competition in the delivery of care. For instance, if you have a sore throat and you have to come see me, you have to wait in the waiting room, and then get checked, and then get a prescription, and it ends up costing you $100. If you had true competition, you should be able to go to a nurse, who could for 1/10 the cost very rapidly do it, and let her give you a prescription for penicillin. See, the doctors and the medical profession have monopolized the system through licensing. And that's not an accident, because they like the idea that you have to go see the physician and pay this huge price. And patients can sort this out, they're not going to go to a nurse if they need brain surgery…”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Laura Knoy on NHPR, June 5, 2007 http://info.nhpr.org/node/13016
2000s, 2006-2009

People , Idea , Thinking , Waiting

“Celebrities are people who spend more time in the plastic surgery clinic than they do outside trying to maintain an image of youth, glamour, and relevance, all while calling President Trump a narcissist.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

"Hot Mic - Hollywood Hypocrites" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuxIdfyKzho (11 July 2017)
2010s

People , Youth , Time

“Robert Caserio recently said to me, “The whole profession has become a vast mimicry. The idea that there is open debate is an absolute fiction. There is only the Foucault monologue, the Lacan monologue, the Derrida monologue. There is no room for creative disagreement. No deviation from what is approved is tolerated.” These monologues are really one, the monotonous drone of the School of Saussure, which has cast its delusional inky cloud over modern academic thought. Never have so many been wrong about so much. It is positively idiotic to imagine that there is no experience outside of language. … It has been a truism of basic science courses for decades in America that the brain has multiple areas of function and that language belongs only to specific areas, injured by trauma and restored by surgery or speech therapy.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 214

School , Imagination , Idea , Science

“I have a philosophy, you do the best you can, and the things you can’t do anything about, don’t give any thought to them. … I feel I have to make a contribution. When I was doing surgery, I made it by operating. Now I try to make it by speaking about preventive medicine.”

Ellsworth Wareham (1914–2018)

Interview with CNN's chief medicine reporter Sanjay Gupta (April 2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGQTpxjbwaM.

Feeling

“It is commonly observed — but not commonly enough! — that old folks removed from their homes to hospital settings are put at a tremendous disadvantage, even though their basic bodily needs are well provided for. They often appear to be quite demented — to be utterly incapable of feeding, clothing, and washing themselves, let alone engaging in any activities of greater interest. Often, however, if they are returned to their homes, they can manage quite well for themselves. How do they do this? Over the years, they have loaded their home environments with ultrafamiliar landmarks, triggers for habits, reminder of what to do, where to find the food, how to get dressed, where the telephone is, and so forth. An old person can be a veritable virtuoso of self-help in such a hugely overlearned world, in spite of his or her brain's increasing imperviousness to new bouts of learning… Taking them out of their homes is literally separating them from large parts of their minds — potentially just as devastating a development as undergoing brain surgery.”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

Kinds of Minds (1996)

World , Food , Home , Learning

“I saw Larry King and he was interviewing Pam Anderson. And it was really fun because Pam Anderson…remember when Pam Anderson did her hepatitis tour? Remember when she got hepatitis and then she did a press tour about it, because she is very conscious of woman's issues, and she went on Larry King and she's talking about it. Oh, and by the way, she said she got it from Tommy Lee, which, of course, she did. And Tommy Lee said she got it from a door knob. And…I'm sure that's at least what she got from Tommy Lee. I saw Tommy Lee at an award show two weeks before, I got crabs just from looking at him. So, anyway, she's talking a minute and then she had had her boobs reduced, you know, she keeps getting reduced and bigger and stuff. And then, Larry has the balls to say to her (imitating Larry King), "Aren't you afraid of that plastic surgery?"”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

and, in the meantime, his ears meeting at the back of his neck.
Allegedly (2004)

Way

“Making it onto the GB Cycling squad and fighting through my second tumour so much faster than I did my first time round is one of my greatest achievements. I believe 100% that following a plant based lifestyle got me back on my bike 6 weeks to the day after having my tumour removed from my spinal cord in my neck. … I feel better now at 36 and after three major neck surgeries than I have ever felt in my life and I owe that to a vegan diet. It is also great to know that you’re not only giving your body the best nourishment but your also not hurting any animals and helping the planet.”

David Smith (rower) (1978) British rower

"David Smith, MBE, vegan paralympian" http://www.greatveganathletes.com/david-smith-mbe-vegan-paralympian, interview with GreatVeganAthletes.com (2015).

Life , Feeling , Time , Help

“Every citizen knows his place. He is born to that place, and the elaborate discipline of training and education and surgery he undergoes fits him at last so completely to it that he has neither ideas nor organs for any purpose beyond it.”

H. G. Wells book The First Men in the Moon

Source: The First Men in the Moon (1901), Ch. 24: The Natural History of the Selenites

Education , Idea , Training

“Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p. 30

“When I checked into a hospital [in Germany, after having been beaten by police in Sichuan], I was told there was bleeding in my brain and I was near fatal collapse. I was rushed into surgery. When I awoke I felt like a normal person again. But I will not feel whole until I and my fellow Chinese can live freely.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, An Artist’s Ordeal. 2009

Feeling , Personality

“If I could give advice to the planet, it would be; don't marry for looks alone, going either way, and I'll tell you why. In a few years, if Barbara's boobs start to sag too much, there's a place you can go where they can just lift 'em right back up to where they were. And they can point the nipple wherever they want 'em. You can actually go to a titty bar, pick out a set of titties and say, "I want those titties on that woman right there." If her belly gets too big and she don't wanna work it off, you can go get a tummy tuck- they'll give you a belly that looks like a cheerleader. You know, if your eyes start to go bad, you can have Lasik surgery and they can give you 20/20 vision at any age. If your hearing starts to fail, they can put a device in your ear that'll make you able to hear as good as you could the day you were born. But let me tell you something, folks… you can't fix stupid. There's not a pill you can take, there's not a class you can go to. Stupid is fo-evah.”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

You Can't Fix Stupid

Age , Stupidity , Way

“A physician, a civil engineer, and a computer scientist were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The physician remarked, "Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib taken out of Adam. This clearly required surgery, and so I can rightly claim that mine is the oldest profession in the world." The civil engineer interrupted, and said, "But even earlier in the book of Genesis, it states that God created the order of the heavens and the earth from out of the chaos. This was the first and certainly the most spectacular application of civil engineering. Therefore, fair doctor, you are wrong: mine is the oldest profession in the world."”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

The computer scientist leaned back in her chair, smiled, and then said confidently, "Ah, but who do you think created the chaos?"
Source: Object-oriented design: With Applications, (1991), p. 2

God , Books , World , Smile

“I'm all for women who get plastic surgery, because plastic surgery allows you to make your outer appearance resemble your inner appearance — fake… We have shows like Extreme Make-Over: "I don't want to develop a personality, just cut my face! Stretch it and staple it. Now I'm happy, or at least I look like it."”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

True Stories I Made Up (2005)

Women , Appearance , Personality , Happiness

“We should be offended when children are denied a proper education. We should be offended when children are told they will spend eternity in hell. We should be offended when medical science, for example stem-cell research, is compromised by the bigoted opinions of powerful and above all well-financed ignoramuses. We should be offended when voodoo, of all kinds, is given equal weight to science. We should be offended by hymen reconstruction surgery. We should be offended by 'female circumcision', euphemism for genital mutilation. We should be offended by stoning.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Lecture at UC Berkeley about The God Delusion, 08/03/2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaJelU29jeI&t=49s
Lecture at UC Berkeley (2008)

Children , Education , Hell , Science

“When confronted by midnight in the social order we have in the past turned to science for help. And little wonder! On so many occasions science has saved us. When we were in the midnight of physical limitation and material inconvenience, science lifted us to the bright morning of physical and material comfort. When we were in the midnight of crippling ignorance and superstition, science brought us to the daybreak of the free and open mind. When we were in the midnight of dread plagues and diseases, science, through surgery, sanitation, and the wonder drugs, ushered in the bright day of physical health, thereby prolonging our lives and making for greater security and physical well-being. How naturally we turn to science in a day when the problems of the world are so ghastly and ominous. But alas! science cannot now rescue us, for even the scientist is lost in the terrible midnight of our age. Indeed, science gave us the very instruments that threaten to bring universal suicide.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

A Knock on Midnight http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/multimediaentry/doc_a_knock_at_midnight/
1960s, Strength to Love (1963)

Health , Age , World , Disease

“Prejean, who got cosmetic surgery before the pageant, just spoke of 'how women can make a difference in the world.”

David Shuster (1967) American television journalist

Absolutely revolting.
5:20 PM - 12 May 09 http://twitter.com/DavidShuster/status/1774206676
On Twitter

Women , World

“As late as 1959, a friend and colleague of Albert Schweitzer defended his unsterile hospital in the following terms: Now to the domestic animals at the Hospital. People have been shocked by the informality with which animals and people mix, and although it is perhaps not always defensible on hygienic grounds, the mixture adds considerably to the charm of the place. The writer was a dental surgeon from New York, who would obviously have had a fit if a goat or chicken had wandered into his New York surgery. He knew full well that at Schweitzer’s hospital “the goats, dogs and cats visit hospital wards teeming with microbial life of the most horrifying varieties,” but he defended their habitation with Africans because that was part of the culture and charm that had to be preserved!”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 385

Life , People , Dogs , Cats

“Ask yourself, if you or a loved one is to undergo brain or heart surgery, does it matter whether the surgeons who will operate had been selected for medical school for any other reason than their aptitude for medicine and surgery? Even if there were no quotas, should race have been "taken into consideration" in their selection? Consider the hairline life and death decisions that surgeons make all the time. Does not every consideration, however slight, apart from aptitude, dilute the qualifications of surgeons for surgery? The next time you are crossing a great bridge, do you not rely upon the qualifications of the engineers and builders to ensure your safety? What does the skin color of the classmates of doctors or engineers have to do with their medicine or their engineering? Is it not their professional qualification that matters, and not either the sameness or the differences from which they came? Is not the same true if we are seeking mathematicians, physicists, economists, or generals? In each case, what is apt for the end in view may be regarded as good, what is inapt may be regarded as bad.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Is Diversity Good? (2003)

Love , Life , Death , School

“Anti-intellectualism … first got its strong grip on our ways of thinking because it was fostered by an evangelical religion that also purveyed many humane and democratic sentiments. It made its way into our politics because it became associated with our passion for equality. It has become formidable in our education partly because our educational beliefs are evangelically egalitarian. Hence, as far as possible, our anti-intellectualism must be excised from the benevolent impulses upon which it lives by constant and delicate acts of intellectual surgery which spare these impulses themselves.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), pp. 22-23

Education , Religion , Way , Thinking

“As females enter the workplace, will our tendency to protect women create rules that will also protect men? Yes and no. Yes, when, for example, the new concern for doctors working fewer than eighty hours per week also affects men. No, when working-class jobs get divided into the males taking the hazardous jobs… and women taking safer jobs. And in professional careers, if males take irregular hours and specialties such as surgery, while females take regular hours and specialties like psychiatry, then we will only reinforce the female-protected class and the male-disposable class.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 213.

Women , Men

“Britain, with the most completely socialized health system in the West, now spends the lowest fraction of GNP on health care of any major nation. There are frequent complaints of excessive waits for elective surgery and other inconveniences, but British citizens live slightly longer than Americans, on average, and our overall health conditions are comparable.”

Robert Kuttner (1943) American journalist

Source: The Economic Illusion (1984), Chapter 6, Welfare, p. 250

Health , Waiting

“It is so very important to remember that, while all healing is of God, we must find the answer to the question, "Which is the most relevant way of cooperating with God in the case of this particular patient? It may be surgery, or medicine, or psychiatry, or prayer. Prayer is not relevant in many cases, save as an aid to the patient’s mental condition, and God is not going to make of prayer an easy magic, just because we have not used our human resources of money and men in wiser ways.””

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.224

Men , Money , God , Way

“I got my wife breast implants for her birthday. I've never been a big fan of plastic surgery, but I gotta admit, I've had a lot of fun playing with these things. I haven't given them to her yet…[Audience cheers] I just keep 'em on my tour bus and just rub 'em in my face…I'm glad they clean up easy. [Audience groans] WHAT?! I'm just glad they are not made out of corduroy, that's all I'm saying! I'd have to have 'em Scotchgarded. [imitates spraying Scotchgard on implants] I find it a little ironic that the product that I use to keep from ruining my sofa should spill my drink on it is actually called…Scotch-guard. [Audience cheers] Sometimes, things just work out perfect, don't they? "Yeah, I'm looking for a product that'll protect my sofa should I spill my Scotch on it. What'd ya have?" [imitates clerk turning to look at stock] "We've got Scotch-guard." "Yeah, let's go with that. Do you have Vodka-guard? How about Sperm-guard?"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

It's a busy couch.
Behavioral Problems

Birthday , Drink , Business , Perfection

“My views on abortion come from my mom. She was a nurse in surgery for her entire adult life, and used to tell me how terrible it was before Roe vs. Wade—when back-alley abortions often placed the woman's life in danger. Today, some people live under a false premise that, if the government makes something illegal, it will go away. But then the illegal activity is simply controlled by an underground or criminal element. And, in the case of abortion, you will not receive the safety and precautions necessary.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 10 (p. 182)

Life , People , Moms , Falseness

“Her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted the birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay, so clearly. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

U.S. Congressional testimony (February 23, 2012)

Birth

“A few things led me to the vegan diet. I guess the first thing to say was that I had multiple injuries and surgeries. Then additional complications: stamina level, inflammation, stuff with my stomach, overall mood, how my body was feeling and working. … Eating a vegan diet has changed my everyday living. I sleep better, I wake up in a better mood, I recover faster, I’m not so inflamed, not so achey. I feel better overall, in everything that I do. I can take in more information easier. My mind is just open.”

Wilson Chandler (1987) American basketball player

"NBA Star Wilson Chandler Reveals the Vegan Secrets Behind His Success" https://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/09/28/wilson-chandler-interview/, interview with Highsnobiety (September 28, 2017).

Feeling , Mood , Sleep , Change

“I would never want to film hard-core pornography, because it always looks like open-heart surgery to me.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Books, Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste (1981)

Heart

“Each day of those early years in pediatric surgery I felt I was on the cutting edge. Some of the surgical problems that landed on the operating table at Children's had not even been named. Many of the operations I performed had never been done before. It was an exuberant feeling, but also a little scary. At times I was troubled by fears that I wasn't doing things the right way, that I would have regrets, or that someone else had performed a certain procedure successfully but had never bothered to write it up for the medical journals, or if they had I couldn't find it.”

C. Everett Koop (1916–2013) American pediatric surgeon and public health administrator

Koop: The Memoirs of America's Family Doctor (1993), p. 127.

Children , Fear , Way , Feeling

“With the aid of science we had built mighty civilizations thousands of years ago when most people in Europe (except in Greece and Rome) were living in forests. We had made outstanding scientific discoveries e. g. decimal system in mathematics, plastic surgery in medicine, etc. However, we subsequently took to the unscientific path of superstitions and empty rituals, which has led us to disaster. The way out of the present morass is to go back again to the path shown by our scientific ancestors, the path of Aryabhatta and Brahmagupta, Sushrut and Charak, Panini and Patanjali, Ramanujan and Raman.”

Markandey Katju (1946) Indian judge

As quoted in "Justice Markandey Katju's reply to two students who want to sue him" http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/justice-markandey-katjus-reply-to-two-students-who-want-to-sue-him-507071, NDTV (10 December 2012)

People , Way , Mathematics , Science

“He used to do surgery
On girls in the eighties,
But gravity always wins.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Fake Plastic Trees
Lyrics, The Bends (1995)

Girl

“Health is normal. The human body is a self-repairing, self-defending, and self-healing marvel. Disease is relatively difficult to induce, considering the body’s powerful immune system. However, this complicated and delicate machinery can be damaged if fed the wrong fuel during the formative years. The chronic diseases commonly associated with aging—hypertension, coronary artery disease, Type II diabetes, degenerative joint disease, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s, as well as most cancers—are not the inevitable outcome of the aging process; they are born out of wrong food choices earlier in life. Healthy living with nutritional excellence throughout life can slow the decline of aging. It can prevent the years and years of suffering in ill health that is so common today as people get older and become dependent on medical treatments, drugs, and surgery. Medical intervention does very little to slow the progression of illnesses and gradual mental and physical decline. Nutritional excellence is the only real fountain of youth.”

Joel Fuhrman (1953) Family Physician and author

Source: Disease-Proof Your Child (2005), Ch. 1, p. 7

Life , People , Health , Youth

“I think stem cell research is crucial. I think medically it has a great future. I think that the answers aren't in yet. Some people say it's absolutely the answer, and others say it's no good and don't do it. It's not known yet, and I'll tell you what: politicians and bureaucrats and the FDA don't know either, and I don't think that's where it should be determined. It should be determined in the marketplace. In Washington so far we only had two choices, either prohibit it or subsidize it. My position is that we shouldn't do either. It should be in the states to devise the rules and laws on what you can do and can't do. Though I'm very strong pro-life and the worst thing I can conceive of is manufacturing babies to be used for research, but as an obstetrician I've had on quite a few occasions to do a surgery on a woman with a pregnancy in the Fallopian tube. And, the fetus is small, and alive, and the heart is beating, but if you don't operate on him, the fetus dies and the patient dies, because a hemorrhage is a very very critical time for ectopic pregnancy. I don't see any reason why you can't use that fetal tissue for research.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Politico TV, May 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dojI3UYIcGg
2000s, 2006-2009

Life , People , Law , Thinking

“Our civilization is in a continuous state of self-repair. Maybe you have undergone surgery once. In former times you might have died. Today everybody can live on and on; everything around us is repaired, even the spirit. Look at the young artists. They only paint the facade and not the things hidden behind it. I don't say that life is lost its originality. I show straightforwardly the state of repair of civilization.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Appel is referring to his sculpture 'State of liberty'
Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), p. 85 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Life , Time , Painting

“I personally was disappointed because I know I'm a lot faster than that. But I was able to do that just coming off knee surgery, so if I look at it that way, I'm happy.”

Javon Ringer (1987) All-American college football player, professional football player, running back

Quoted here http://www.freep.com/article/20090228/SPORTS07/902280363/1048/SPORTS/Ringer+works+out+for+scouts+with++80+++knee

Disappointment , Way , Personality , Happiness

“Plastic surgery is a way for people to buy themselves a few years before they have to truly confront what ageing is, which of course is not that your looks are falling apart, but that you are falling apart and some-day you will have fallen apart and ceased to exist.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Quoted in Christopher Goodwin, "Get real – ageing’s not all Helen Mirren," Times Online (UK) (4 March 2007)

People , Age , Way

“Last week the doctor at the Tilson Rural Clinic had shown him his X-rays, the too-easy-to-interpret shadows on his liver and lungs. Guilford had declined an offer of surgery and and last-gasp radiation therapy. This horse was too old to beat.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Darwinia

Epilogue (p. 316)
Darwinia (1998)

Horse

“It's not going to interfere with the film. I heal miraculously. I've been in an auto accident and another fire. They thought I'd need plastic surgery, but I haven't a scar…No, I don't think I'm accident prone, but it's strange.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Referring to a house fire
Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)

Thinking

“I have an artificial left eye. I lost my real eye in a car accident when I was eighteen. In fact, I had to have my entire face rebuilt because I smashed it up pretty good. It took six years and thirteen surgeries. However, I did have the pleasure of freezing a plastic eyeball in an ice cube, putting it in a friend's drink, ("Eyeball in your highball?") and watching him freak completely. Okay, so maybe that's not going down on my good karma record. But it sure was fun.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Twenty-One Things You Don't Know About Me

Pleasure , Cars , Drink

“I was in such a state while I was recovering from this surgery and the pain medication that I was on sort of took all the inhibitions out that I may have had. I found that I was ordering things online; big boxes of stuff would arrive at my house.”

Harry Connick, Jr. (1967) American singer, conductor, pianist, actor, and composer

Late Show with David Letterman TV interview, February 2007 http://www.postchronicle.com/news/entertainment/tittletattle/article_21263069.shtml

Pain , Housing , Box

“America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

Speech in Boston, Massachusetts (24 May 1920); Harding is often thought to have coined the word "normalcy" in this speech, but the word is recorded as early as the 1850s as alternative to "normality".
1920s

“[PDP100 Duck Popcorn Maker] Actually I don't really want this, I just wanted to show you it, as this is the most disgusting popcorn maker I have ever seen. Actually this might be good for my Victorian Sanitarium playset. He could be the weak-stomached young doctor who keeps throwing up when they bring in Downs Syndrome Pooh for more experimental brain surgery.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Yahtzee's Christmas Wishlist http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/essays/wishlist.htm
Fully Ramblomatic, Essays

“I used to think that medicine and particularly surgery is just failed prevention. That if we could treat these people properly and, particularly, if we could do something about prevention, we could empty the hospital wards. It was probably false, but that's what I used to think.”

Michael Marmot (1945) Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health

Interview, 18 March 2002

People , Thinking , Falseness

“Nutrition science is where surgery was in about 1650, you know, really interesting and promising, but would you want to have them operate on you yet? I don’t think so.”

Michael Pollan (1955) American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism

[In Defense of Food: Author, Journalist Michael Pollan on Nutrition, Food Science and the American Diet, 2008-02-13, Democracy Now!, http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/13/in_defense_of_food_author_journalist, 2009-04-15]

Thinking , Science

“Throughout this entire rehab process, I have been driven to get back on the field as quickly as I can. That's why I had the shoulder surgery and that's why I underwent back surgery to reduce the risk of further issues going forward. With these two surgeries behind me, I hope to be able to put on a Mets uniform again as soon as possible. My desire to play is as strong as ever.”

David Wright (1982) American baseball player

quoted by MLB.com columnist Lindsay Berra on The Official Website of The New York Mets http://m.mets.mlb.com/news/article/259053992/what-is-the-latest-on-david-wrights-recovery/.

Hope , Strong

“Somehow, open heart surgery means more to most of us then the Alton, Illinois, Lock and Dam 26.”

John W. Kingdon (1940) American political scientist

Source: Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies - (Second Edition), Chapter 5, Problems, p. 95

Heart

“If Western Europe and the United States committed seven billion dollars annually to the cause of clean drinking water worldwide, that investment would save four thousand lives a day”…
“Seven billion dollars. That’s less than what Europeans spend each year for perfume and Americans for cosmetic surgery. Before he went to the gallows, Enoch Anthem spoke often about Christ turning water into wine, but he never once implored Christendom to turn perfume into water.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008), Chapter 16 (p. 368)

Drink , Water , Wine , Christ

“One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but it can’t be proven without surgery, so the insurance hasn’t been willing to cover her medication.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

U.S. Congressional testimony (February 23, 2012)

“Here is how [life] happens. We find something we want to do, if we are lucky, or something we need to do, if we are like most people. We use it as a way to obtain food, shelter, clothing, mates, comfort, a first folio of Shakespeare, model airplanes, American Girl dolls, a handful of rice, sex, solitude, a trip to Venice, Nikes, drinking water, plastic surgery, child care, dogs, medicine, education, cars, spiritual solace -- whatever we think we need. To do this, we enact the role we call "me," trying to brand ourselves as a person who can and should obtain these things.In the process, we place the people in our lives into compartments and define how they should behave to our advantage. Because we cannot force them to follow our desires, we deal with projections of them created in our minds. But they will be contrary and have wills of their own. Eventually new projections of us are dealing with new projections of them. Sometimes versions of ourselves disagree. We succumb to temptation — but, oh, father, what else was I gonna do? I feel like hell. I repent. I'll do it again… This has not been a conventional review. There is no need to name the characters, name the actors, assign adjectives to their acting. Look at who is in this cast. You know what I think of them. This film must not have seemed strange to them. It's what they do all day, especially waiting around for the director to make up his mind.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/synecdoche-new-york-2008 of Synecdoche, New York (5 November 2008)
Reviews, Four star reviews

Life , People , Education , Food

“I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I'd look like without plastic surgery.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

As quoted in On Being Blonde (2004), by P. Munier, p. 84

“The neat division between roles and real selves reduces society to a masquerade party. Yet not even plastic surgery can heal the psychic disfigurements. The social evil reaches into the living fibers; people not only assume roles, they are roles.”

Russell Jacoby (1945) American historian

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 68

People , Evil

“When my looks are shot—which I reckon will be in about six years—I’ll have plastic surgery here on my chin, and they can pull my cheeks back, but I’m not ready for that. And because of the smoking, the mouth is starting to give.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On plastic surgery, The Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/celebrity/the-11-most-courtney-love-things-courtney-love-said-in-her-latest-interview-20140811-102qxd.html (11 August 2014)
2014–2017

“Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Paris Review interview (1958)
Context: Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

Fools , Way

“As a result, the topic became – primarily in the USA – prematurely known as ‘computer science’ – which, actually, is like referring to surgery as ‘knife science’ – and it was firmly implanted in people’s minds that computing science is about machines and their peripheral equipment. Quod non”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1986) On a cultural gap http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD924.html (EWD 924).
1980s
Context: A confusion of even longer standing came from the fact that the unprepared included the electronic engineers that were supposed to design, build and maintain the machines. The job was actually beyond the electronic technology of the day, and, as a result, the question of how to get and keep the physical equipment more or less in working condition became in the early days the all-overriding concern. As a result, the topic became – primarily in the USA – prematurely known as ‘computer science’ – which, actually, is like referring to surgery as ‘knife science’ – and it was firmly implanted in people’s minds that computing science is about machines and their peripheral equipment. Quod non [Latin: "Which is not true"]. We now know that electronic technology has no more to contribute to computing than the physical equipment. We now know that programmable computer is no more and no less than an extremely handy device for realizing any conceivable mechanism without changing a single wire, and that the core challenge for computing science is hence a conceptual one, viz., what (abstract) mechanisms we can conceive without getting lost in the complexities of our own making.

People , Science

“A Philosopher's school is a Surgery: pain, not pleasure, you should have felt therein. For on entering none of you is whole.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Context: A Philosopher's school is a Surgery: pain, not pleasure, you should have felt therein. For on entering none of you is whole. One has a shoulder out of joint, another an abscess: a third suffers from an issue, a forth pains in the head. And am I then to sit down and treat you to pretty sentiments and empty fluourishes, so that you may applaud me and depart, with neither shoulder, nor head, nor issue, nor abscess a whit the better for your visit? Is it then for this that young men are to quit their homes, and leave parents, friends, kinsmen and substance to mouth out Bravo to your empty phrases! (121).

Pain , Pleasure , School

“Quantification, like surgery, is an excellent thing in the right place, but a very bad topic for obsession. Unless you know just what you are counting--unless you are sure that the things counted are standard units--and unless you understand what is proved by results of your counting, quantifying provide you only with the outward show of science, a mirage, never the oasis.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 87-88.
Context: The future will not "be with" anybody in the sense of falling to them as a conquest. The need for many different methods is not going to go away, dissolved in a quasi-physical heaven where all serious work is quantitative... Quantification, like surgery, is an excellent thing in the right place, but a very bad topic for obsession. Unless you know just what you are counting--unless you are sure that the things counted are standard units--and unless you understand what is proved by results of your counting, quantifying provide you only with the outward show of science, a mirage, never the oasis.

Understanding , Science

“Venetian Memories. Jane has agreed to have copied in her brain some of Paul’s memory-traces. After she recovers consciousness in the post-surgery room, she has a new set of vivid apparent memories. She seems to remember walking on the marble paving of a square, hearing the flapping of flying pigeons and the cries of gulls, and seeing light sparkling on green water. One apparent memory is very clear. She seems to remember looking across the water to an island, where a white Palladian church stood out brilliantly against a dark thundercloud.”

Derek Parfit book Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 220

Light , Water , Memory , Flying

“I have enormous admiration for the Jewish people, inside or outside Israel. There have always been Jewish members of my staff and indeed my Cabinet. In fact I just wanted a Cabinet of clever, energetic people – and frequently that turned out to be the same thing. My old constituency of Finchley has a large Jewish population. In the thirty-three years I represented it I never had a Jew come in poverty and desperation to one of my constituency surgeries. They had always been looked after by their own community.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 509

People , Communication

“Revision of character will be a much more tangible and scientific thing when the physiology of psychology becomes more than a controverted conjecture. There has been no attempt, no methodical attempt, to amend character thru physiological and neural violence; and about all we know about the possibilities of such a surgery consists of glimpses caught on occasions of casualty. We do know, however, that neural changes appear promptly and invariably in consciousness, and that there is every reason to suspect perfect parallelism between the neural and psychic processes. This unfailing attendance and dependence of mind on physical phenomena, and the superior tangibility of matter over consciousness, assure the prophet that an accomplished and sensitized attention is the all-essential to the achievement of psychical amendment by neural and physiological alteration. In the New Age which we prevision and approach, among the marvels to amaze our clumsy contemplations will be the miracles of cerebral surgery, the physics of the humors, the science of the physiology of consciousness.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), Individual Culture, pp. 274–275

Dependency , Perfection , Appearance , Age

“Throat surgery left her with a masculine voice, but the doyenne of the Kirana gharana turned it into an advantage through years of hard work.”

Gangubai Hangal (1913–2009) Indian singer

Deepa Ganesh, in "Gangubai's search for perfection."

“Her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted the birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay, so clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy. After months of paying over $100 out of pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore and had to stop taking it. I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of her final exam period she’d been in the emergency room all night in excruciating pain. … Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary.”

Sandra Fluke (1981) American women's rights activist and lawyer

U.S. Congressional testimony (February 23, 2012)

Pain , Birth , Night , Learning

“If we already lived in a cruelty-free world, the notion of re-introducing suffering, exploitation and creatures eating each other would seem not so much frightful as unimaginable – no more seriously conceivable than reverting to surgery without anaesthesia today.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

" Reprogramming Predators https://www.hedweb.com/abolitionist-project/reprogramming-predators.html", BLTC Research, 2009

World , Suffering

“My first year, my rookie year at the 49ers, I had two labrum tears. Both shoulders. I had a chance to get the surgery before the season or play ball, and I told my coaches that I wanted to play and then get the surgeries. The reason was, when I came out [of college], everybody said I was injury-prone, and I just wanted to show them how tough I was and how much I love the game. That’s what that year was about. I got the surgeries after that first year in San Francisco. Both shoulders.”

Frank Gore (1983) American football running back

On Injuries
“After the surgeries, I respected Ronnie Brown, I respected Benson, I respected Cadillac. But I told people, ‘Once I get healthy I WILL NEVER be outrushed by any of those guys. No one in my draft class will ever outrush me again. That second year I proved that.
“How I did that … I don’t know. It’s not me. It’s God. God got me here. God and hard work. Respecting the game. Love, man. Love. Love the game. Love my teammates. Every time I get ready to strap up, show the world today that no one is better.”

Chance , Game , Season , Love

“[C]osmetic surgery is slowly shifting from being a procedure that people gossip about to being a commonplace tool for self-improvement.”

Barry Schwartz book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

The Paradox of Choice (2004)

People

“The irony of those who are willing to do plastic surgery, facelifts or whatever just to look beautiful. Many of them forget the fact that beauty is not fully reflected in what other people see.”

Titon Rahmawan

Forgetting , Beauty , People