Abraham Flexner Quotes

#1. Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

Abraham Flexner

#2. Science, in the very act of solving problems, creates more of them.

Abraham Flexner

#3. Medical education is not just a program for building knowledge and skills in its recipients ... it is also an experience which creates attitudes and expectations.

Abraham Flexner

#4. The student is to collect and evaluate facts. The facts are locked up in the patient.

Abraham Flexner

#5. Mathematicians, like cows in the dark, all look alike to me.

Abraham Flexner

#6. A patient had a 50-50 chance of benefiting from visiting a physician as of 1910. Medicine was more like voodoo than science until the 20th Century.

Abraham Flexner

#7. There are men that teach best by not teaching at all.

Abraham Flexner

#8. We must not overlook the role that extremists play. They are the gadflies that keep society from being too complacent or self-satisfied; they are, if sound, the spearhead of progress. If they are fundamentally wrong, free discussion will in time put an end to them.

Abraham Flexner

#9. The world in which we live is the only world about which our senses can testify.

Abraham Flexner

#10. The real enemy is the man who tries to mold the human spirit so that it will not dare to spread its wings.

Abraham Flexner

#11. You have had your last bad meal. But, you have also heard your last honest compliment, and you have lost your last true friend.

Abraham Flexner