I studied medicine so I could help others - set a leg or whatever - and it's given me a great deal of satisfaction.

I have been lucky in that I've been alive at times when the things that I wanted to do were capable of being done.

You disappoint yourself more often by not doing things because of cowardice and temerity than you ever did by doing things that turn out to be wrong.

Every eye is an eye, when you're doing the surgery there that is just as important as if you were doing eye surgery on the prime minster or the king.

Each year in Africa about two and a half million people go blind...and they just go blind... they sit around in their huts.

The neglect this implied, the suffering and wasted quality of human life were appalling.

I believe that the basic attribute of mankind is to look after each other