Joseph Murray Quotes & Sayings

Service to society is the rent we pay for living on this planet. — Joseph Murray

I tell [medical students] that they are the luckiest persons on earth to be in medical school, and to forget all this worry about H.M.O.'s and keep your eye on helping the patient. It's the best time ever to be a doctor because you can heal and treat conditions that were untreatable even a couple of years ago. — Joseph Murray

The slow rejection of the foreign skin grafts fascinated me. How could the host distinguish another person's skin from his own? — Joseph Murray

I've never regretted a swim — Joseph Murray

It is probably no exaggeration to suppose that in order to improve such an organ as the eye at all, it must be improved in ten different ways at once. And the improbability of any complex organ being produced and brought to perfection in any such way is an improbability of the same kind and degree as that of producing a poem or a mathematical demonstration by throwing letters at random on a table. — Joseph Murray

Stem cells are probably going to be extremely useful. — Joseph Murray

One of my surgical giant friends had in his operating room a sign "If the operation is difficult, you aren't doing it right." What he meant was, you have to plan every operation You cannot ever be casual You have to realize that any operation is a potential fatality. — Joseph Murray

I wanted to be a surgeon, possibly influenced by the qualities of our family doctor who cared for our childhood ailments. — Joseph Murray

At heart, I'm a reconstructive surgeon. — Joseph Murray

My only wish would be to have 10 more lives to live on this planet. If that were possible, I'd spend one lifetime each in embryology, genetics, physics, astronomy and geology. The other lifetimes would be as a pianist, backwoodsman, tennis player, or writer for the 'National Geographic.' — Joseph Murray

Animal experimentation has been essential to the development of all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacements and all vaccinations. — Joseph Murray

Blanket objection is not very reasonable to me - any effort to control scientific advances is doomed to fail. — Joseph Murray

You cannot stop the human mind from working. — Joseph Murray

Is the Church inimical to science? Growing up as a Catholic and a scientist - I don't see it. One truth is revealed truth, the other is scientific truth. If you really believe that creation is good, there can be no harm in studying science. The more we learn about creation - the way it emerged - it just adds to the glory of God. Personally, I've never seen a conflict. — Joseph Murray

It's the best time ever to be a doctor because you can heal and treat conditions that were untreatable even a few years ago. — Joseph Murray

If you're going to worry about what people say, you're never going to make any progress. — Joseph Murray

Kidney transplants seem so routine now. But the first one was like Lindbergh's flight across the ocean. — Joseph Murray