If I became just a brain in a jar - as long as I can communicate back and forth with people, that would be okay with me.

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

Culture matters. Of course, if physicians are rewarded or penalized for their service and results, the culture will change. But the key values we doctors are being pressed to embrace are humility, teamwork, and discipline.

Outsiders tend to be the first to recognize the inadequacies of our social institutions. But, precisely because they are outsiders, they are usually in a poor position to fix them.

There are times when you have sharp elbows, and people are trying to muscle you out of certain meetings - because then people could leak to the press that you had a role in certain decisions. I, at twenty-six, was very impatient and didn't know how to keep my powder dry. I was running a team of seventy-five people when I had never been a boss. I was the worst boss ever.

Checklists turn out...to be among the basic tools of the quality and productivity revolution in aviation, engineering, construction - in virtually every field combining high risk and complexity. Checklists seem lowly and simplistic, but they help fill in for the gaps in our brains and between our brains.

When we lived in a society where we had large families that lived together, especially in agricultural societies like my grandfather and father grew up in, the result is you always had family around to take care of you.