After readinf some essay on the nature of human fallibility, I was very aware that we are the recipients of a huge amount of discovery over the last century. Medicine exemplifies this. And that has transitioned us from a world in which people's lives were mostly governed by ignorance to one that's constrained by ineptitude. A century ago, we didn't know, for instance, what diseases afflicted us, what their nature really was, or what to do about them. And that has changed.

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.

The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one's life.

If we took away the ability to put defibrillators in people in their last years, people would be shouting in the streets.

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

We have medicalized aging, and that experiment is failing us.

The definition of what it means to be dying has changed radically. We are able to extend people's lives considerably, including sometimes, good days.