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Quote by Paul Kalanithi

“By the end of medical school, most students tended to focus on "lifestyle" specialities - those with more humane hours, higher salaries, and lower pressures - the idealism of their med school application essays tempered or lost. As graduation neared and we sat down, in a Yale tradition, to re-write our commencement oath - a melding of the words of Hippocrates, Maimonides, Osler, along with a few other great medical forefathers - several students argued for the removal of language insisting that we place our patients' interests above our own. (The rest of us didn't allow this discussion to continue for long. The words stayed. This kind of egotism struck me as antithetical to medicine and, it should be noted, entirely reasonable. Indeed, this is how 99 percent of people select their jobs: pay, work environment, hours. But thats the point. Putting lifestyle first is how you find a job - not a calling).”

Quote by Paul Kalanithi

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When Breath Becomes Air

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Paul Kalanithi

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“რატომ არ უნდა ღმერთს, რომ საკურთხეველზე რძე დაუსხურონ - ყოფიერების ნამდვილი წვენი, - წვენი, რომელიც მიწის ერთი ბინადრიდან მეორეში გადაიღვრება; ანდა რატომ არ შეიძლება, საკურთხეველზე, როგორც ხნულში, მოუბნიო პეშვით ხორბალი, რისგანაც მერე არსობის პური გამოცხვება?”

“Individualists and collectivists both have been wronged by the government, and we all maintain (consciously or subconsciously) a list of the ways our lives have been diminished by its bureaucracies and actions. One of the differences between the collectivists and the individualists is that those wrongs are front and center for the individualists, whereas the collectivists are blind to those wrongs, or they excuse those wrongs, or they forgive those wrongs. "Use us," the collectivists say, while they throw not only themselves into the bottomless pit that is the Administrative State, but everybody else too.”

“They have concluded that it is their duty to rush forward on their journey no matter what the weather; I, on the other hand, am for waiting for favourable wind and current. They are for risking all for God at the snap of a finger; I am for taking advantage of every opportunity to secure my life and estate. They are for holding to their ideas even though all the world would be against them; I, however, am for religion insofar as the times, conditions, and my safety allow it. They are for religion when walking in rags and abuse; I am for it when it walks in silver slippers, in sunshine, and with applause.”