On Saturday, I was a surgeon in South Africa, very little known. On Monday, I was world renowned.

The individual is the brain, not the heart.

It is infinitely better to transplant a heart than to bury it to be devoured by worms.

I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures.

I don't believe medical discoveries are doing much to advance human life. As fast as we create ways to extend it we are inventing ways to shorten it.

For a dying man it is not a difficult decision [to agree to become the world's first heart transplant] ... because he knows he is at the end. If a lion chases you to the bank of a river filled with crocodiles, you will leap into the water convinced you have a chance to swim to the other side. But you would not accept such odds if there were no lion.

I believe often that death is good medical treatment because it can achieve what all the medical advances and technology cannot achieve today, and that is stop the suffering of the patient.