Siddhartha Mukherjee Quotes

Quotes about:

Age Cancer Illness Writing

Good physicians are rarely dispassionate. They agonize and self-doubt over patients.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Self, Doubt, Physicians

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History repeats, but science reverberates.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Repeating History, Repeats

Siddhartha Mukherjee (2011). “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”, p.466, Simon and Schuster

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If the history of medicine is told through the stories of doctors, it is because their contributions stand in place of the more substantive heroism of their patients.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Doctors, Medicine, Heroism

Siddhartha Mukherjee (2011). “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”, p.148, Simon and Schuster

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All cancers are alike but they are alike in a unique way.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer, Unique, Way

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I think the cardinal rule of learning to write is learning to read first. I learned to write by learning to read.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Writing, Thinking, Firsts

"Siddhartha Mukherjee: 'A positive attitude does not cure cancer, any more than a negative one causes it'". Interview With Decca Aitkenhead, www.theguardian.com. December 4, 2011.

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Most discoveries even today are a combination of serendipity and of searching.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Discovery, Serendipity, Today

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Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer, Cells, Survival

Siddhartha Mukherjee (2011). “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”, p.388, Simon and Schuster

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Cancer's life is a recapitulation of the body's life, its existence a pathological mirror of our own. Susan Sontag warned against overburdening an illness with metaphors. But this is not a metaphor. Down to their innate molecular core, cancer cells are hyperactive, survival-endowed, scrappy, fecund, inventive copies of ourselves.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer, Mirrors, Cells

Siddhartha Mukherjee (2011). “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”, p.388, Simon and Schuster

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It is hard to look at the tumor and not come away with the feeling that one has encountered a powerful monster in its infancy

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Powerful, Feelings, Monsters

Siddhartha Mukherjee (2011). “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

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Cancer was not disorganized chromosomal chaos. It was organized chromosomal chaos

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer, Chaos, Organized

Siddhartha Mukherjee (2011). “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”, p.366, Simon and Schuster

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I think the way we think about cancer, the way we treat cancer, has dramatically changed in the last century. There is an enormous amount of options that a physician can provide today, right down from curing patients, treating patients or providing patients with psychic solace or pain relief.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Pain, Cancer, Thinking

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In 2005, a man diagnosed with multiple myeloma asked me if he would be alive to watch his daughter graduate from high school in a few months. In 2009, bound to a wheelchair, he watched his daughter graduate from college. The wheelchair had nothing to do with his cancer. The man had fallen down while coaching his youngest son's baseball team.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Baseball, Daughter, Cancer

Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010). “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”, p.444, Simon and Schuster

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A positive attitude does not cure cancer, any more than a negative one causes it.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Pain, Attitude, Cancer

Interview with Decca Aitkenhead, www.theguardian.com. December 4, 2011.

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One swallow is a coincidence, but two swallows make summer.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Summer, Two, Coincidence

Siddhartha Mukherjee (2011). “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”, p.171, Simon and Schuster

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There is a duality in recognising what an incredible disease it is - in terms of its origin, that it emerges out of a normal cell. It's a reminder of what a wonderful thing a normal cell is. In a very cold, scientific sense, I think a cancer cell is a kind of biological marvel.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer, Thinking, Cells

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When you immerse yourself in medicine you realise that hope is not absolute. It's not that simple.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Simple, Medicine, Realising

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Cancer has enormous diversity and behaves differently: it's highly mutable, the evolutionary principles are very complicated and often its capacity to be constantly mystifying comes as a big challenge.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer, Diversity, Challenges

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It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America - a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance's link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety - one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer, Media, Hysteria

"New Warning Labels: Ruining Smokers’ Days?" by Nick Baumann, www.motherjones.com. June 21, 2011.

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Probably the most important reason we are seeing more cancers than before is because the population is ageing overall. And cancer is an age-related disease.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer, Important, Age

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In Paris, friend of Bequerel’s, a young physicist-chemist couple named Pierre and Marie Curie, began to scour the natural world for even more powerful chemical sources of X-rays. Pierre and Marie (then Maria Sklodowska, a penniless Polish immigrant living in a garret in Paris) had met at the Sorbonne and been drawn to each other because of a common interest in magnetism.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Couple, Powerful, Paris

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If there's a seminal discovery in oncology in the last 20 years, it's that idea that cancer genes are often mutated versions of normal genes.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer, Discovery, Years

"An Oncologist Writes 'A Biography Of Cancer'". Interview with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. November 17, 2010.

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There is a very moving and ancient connection between cancer and depression.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer, Moving, Connections

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I began wondering, can one really write a biography of an illness? But I found myself thinking of cancer as this character that has lived for 4,000 years, and I wanted to know what was its birth, what is its mind, its personality, its psyche?

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cancer, Writing, Character

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Pharmacology is benefited by the prepared mind. You need to know what you are looking for.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Mind, Needs, Pharmacology

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This was yet another colonial fascination: to create the conditions of misery in a population, then subject it to social or medical experimentation.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Fascination, Population, Medical

Siddhartha Mukherjee (2011). “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

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Born: 1970
Occupation: Physician
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