A patient had a 50-50 chance of benefiting from visiting a physician as of 1910. Medicine was more like voodoo than science until the 20th Century.
ABRAHAM FLEXNERYou have had your last bad meal. But, you have also heard your last honest compliment, and you have lost your last true friend.
More Abraham Flexner Quotes
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The spearhead of progress. If they are fundamentally wrong, free discussion will in time put an end to them.
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As far as he cared, the question of utility was never raised.
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Curiosity, which may or may not eventuate in something useful, is probably the most outstanding characteristic of modern thinking .
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Mathematicians, like cows in the dark, all look alike to me.
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At no period of [Michael Faraday’s] unmatched career was he interested in utility.
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Medical education is not just a program for building knowledge and skills in its recipients… it is also an experience which creates attitudes and expectations.
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Unintelligence could go no further! … In Great Britain, the situation is similar. … Until the figures are reversed, … nations deceive themselves as to what they care about most.
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Any suspicion of utility would have restricted his restless curiosity. In the end, utility resulted, but it was never a criterion to which his ceaseless experimentation could be subjected.
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The real enemy is the man who tries to mold the human spirit so that it will not dare to spread its wings.
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Science, in the very act of solving problems, creates more of them.
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We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent or self-satisfied; they are, if sound
ABRAHAM FLEXNER -
You have had your last bad meal. But, you have also heard your last honest compliment, and you have lost your last true friend.
ABRAHAM FLEXNER -
Institutions of learning should be devoted to the cultivation of curiosity, and the less they are deflected by the consideration of immediacy of application
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The more likely they are to contribute not only to human welfare, but to the equally important satisfaction of intellectual interest
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We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent.
ABRAHAM FLEXNER






