Top 100 Bernie Siegel Quotes
#1. Don't do things to not die, do things to enjoy living. The by-product may be not dying.
Bernie Siegel
#2. Life is a labor pain; we are here to give birth to ourself.
Bernie Siegel
#3. Thoughts are chemical. They can either kill us or cure us.
Bernie Siegel
#4. Don't try to help people to 'not die', help them to enjoy life!
Bernie Siegel
#5. It is the experience of living that is important, not searching for meaning. We bring meaning by how we love the world.
Bernie Siegel
#6. By disregarding intuition in favor of science, or science in favor of instincts, we limit ourselves.
Bernie Siegel
#7. Give someone who has faith in you a placebo and call it a hair growing pill, anti-nausea pill or whatever, and you will be amazed at how many respond to your therapy.
Bernie Siegel
#8. I have always made a distinction between healing and curing. To me, 'healed' represents a condition of one's life; 'cured' relates strictly to one's physical condition. In other words, there may be healed quadriplegics and AIDS patients, and cured cancer patients who are leading unhealthy lives.
Bernie Siegel
#9. Inspiration is the greatest gift because it opens your life to many new possibilities. Each day becomes more meaningful, and your life is enhanced when your actions are guided by what inspires you.
Bernie Siegel
#10. I had patients who didn't die because they had too many pets to try to find homes for. It's why women live longer than men with the same health problems.
Bernie Siegel
#11. Doctors are busy playing God when so few of us have the qualifications. And besides, the job is taken.
Bernie Siegel
#12. So to me, what the drugs and addiction are saying is that I deserve to feel good, I'm allowed to take this because look how I was treated as a child. Our authority figures, particularly our parents are hypnotic. Their words are hypnotic literally to small children because of brain wave patterns.
Bernie Siegel
#13. A surgeon is surrounded by people who are sick, discouraged, afraid, embittered, dying - but also courageous, loving, wise, compassionate and alive.
Bernie Siegel
#14. Mind-body medicine should not be an 'alternative,' nor should complementary and integrative medicine be something doctors are not exposed to during their training.
Bernie Siegel
#15. It's not about curing the disease, but healing the life; then the physical benefits come.
Bernie Siegel
#16. I see people who die a few minutes after a doctor tells them there is no hope of a cure. They give up and go. Others get angry and find joy in proving the doctor wrong. Something within them is challenged and hopeful. Hope is the divine motivator.
Bernie Siegel
#17. Getting well is not the only goal. Even more important is learning to live without fear, to be at peace with life and ultimately death.
Bernie Siegel
#18. Having pets in the house helps everyone have a reverence for life.
Bernie Siegel
#19. I was called a 'CD' by a suicidal teenager, who is alive today because I became her 'Chosen Dad,' who loved her. We all have the potential to re-parent ourselves and others.
Bernie Siegel
#20. If you think about evolution, sleep, at some time, was a dangerous undertaking. You lie down in your cave or shelter, and along comes a predator and has you for dinner. Many creatures do not sleep or sleep while standing so they can escape from dangerous situations.
Bernie Siegel
#21. Life is a miracle, and we need to not fear trying to achieve our potential and reveal the remarkable creation we and all living things are and that our Creator has built into us the ability to induce self-healing.
Bernie Siegel
#22. I performed wound care or minor surgery, I would always apologize for any pain I was causing the animal and they would lick my hand and not bite me out of anger due to the pain. They are also far more forgiving than people are of human beings and other animals.
Bernie Siegel
#23. Patients want to be seen as people. For me, the person's life comes first; the disease is simply one aspect of it, which I can guide my patients to use as a redirection in their lives. When doctors look at their patients, however, they are trained to see only the disease.
Bernie Siegel
#24. The mind and body are not separate units, but one integrated system. How we act and what we think, eat, and feel are all related to our health. Physicians should be capable of teaching this behavior to patients.
Bernie Siegel
#25. Unconditional love is the most powerful stimulant to the immune system.
Bernie Siegel
#26. Refusal to hope is nothing more than a decision to die.
Bernie Siegel
#27. When I experience something, I believe it. I almost choked to death when I was a four year old and had a near death experience. I was very upset that I didn't die because it was a lot more interesting out of your body than in it.
Bernie Siegel
#28. Anything that offers hope has the potential to heal.
Bernie Siegel
#29. If you see what you do each day as your way of loving the world and helping it heal, then life gets to be a lot different. The difference between burning up and burning out is the difference between loving what you are doing and not loving it.
Bernie Siegel
#30. I use music in the operating room to help create a healing environment for patients and staff. There is a reason that certain heart rates are healthy and certain beats of music heal and relax us.
Bernie Siegel
#31. I truly feel the best doctors are ones who are criticized by nurses, patients and family. They do not make excuses and learn from their mistakes.
Bernie Siegel
#32. There is survival behavior, and doctors need to learn from patients who do not die when they are supposed to, instead of saying, 'You're doing very well, so keep doing whatever you are doing.' They should be asking what their patient is doing and pass the information to other patients.
Bernie Siegel
#33. One's attitude towards oneself is the single most important factor in healing and staying well.
Bernie Siegel
#34. As doctors, we are not trained to communicate and understand the power of our words as they relate to a patient's ability and desire to survive.
Bernie Siegel
#35. Live by your experience and do not let limited beliefs alter your life experience.
Bernie Siegel
#36. Life is an opportunity to contribute love in your own way.
Bernie Siegel
#37. If I can't find a cat, I stop and quiet my mind, not yelling the cat's name, and focus on connecting with the cat and then I get the message and go to that room or outside door and find the cat.
Bernie Siegel
#38. Hoping means seeing that the outcome you want is possible and then working for it.
Bernie Siegel
#39. Medicine is a very tough thing. I mean, everyone is going to die. Sooner or later. That's a tough thing to face.
Bernie Siegel
#40. The question is not, will there be difficulties and threats to our existence, but how will we deal with them and what can we learn from them. How can they become blessings to society, as a life threatening disease is to an individual, by teaching us about the meaning of our life and existence?
Bernie Siegel
#41. There's very little that shocks me because I consider life a miracle so I guess what shocks me is that life exists. How the hell did we get here? What shocks me is that bacteria alter their genes and resist antibiotics and viruses resist vaccines.
Bernie Siegel
#42. The thing you see in survivors is that they express feelings - I won't say some of the things they tell their doctors, when doctors tell them they're going to die in six months. Boy, do they let the doctor know how they feel about that statement.
Bernie Siegel
#43. Diseases can be our spiritual flat tires - disruptions in our lives that seem to be disasters at the time but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way.
Bernie Siegel
#44. An awareness of one's mortality can lead you to wake up and live an authentic, meaningful life.
Bernie Siegel
#45. God wants us to know that life is a series of beginnings, not endings. Just as graduations are not terminations, but commencements. Creation is an ongoing process, and when we create a perfect world where love and compassion are shared by all, suffering will cease.
Bernie Siegel
#46. I wish medical schools helped us to analyze our healthy and unhealthy reasons for becoming doctors.
Bernie Siegel
#47. Society should see parenting as a public health issue and help parents to bring their children up feeling loved. We have birthing classes, but no parenting classes. The latter is desperately needed if we are to avoid self-destruction.
Bernie Siegel
#48. The inexplicable happens all the time. It makes more sense to simply accept things we observe but cannot understand. It is really more scientific to keep an open mind. Until we can understand and explain the things we now label miracles, let us accept them and try to create more of them.
Bernie Siegel
#49. The doctor I would want for myself or for anyone else I cared about would be one who understands that disease is more than just a clinical entity; it is an experience and a metaphor, with a message that must be listened to.
Bernie Siegel
#50. Relationships keep us alive and our lives meaningful.
Bernie Siegel
#51. I decided to become a surgeon named Bernie who writes books and gives seminars to teach people what he has learned and is still learning about how to deal with life's difficulties.
Bernie Siegel
#52. Love is giving with no expectations ... Love cures, heals, and rewards two people: the lover and the beloved.
Bernie Siegel
#53. What I try to get physically healthy people to understand is that they're going to die someday. There is no way out. And dying isn't failure, but not living is, so make use of your time. Don't keeping waiting.
Bernie Siegel
#54. When you love the unlovable and forgive the unforgivable, you're free.
Bernie Siegel
#55. Stories change people while statistics give them something to argue about.
Bernie Siegel
#56. If God had made a perfect world, it would be a magic trick, not creation, with no meaning or place for us to learn and create. Mankind is not yet ready for a perfect world. We do not know how to appreciate perfection.
Bernie Siegel
#57. Consciousness is non-local and does not depend on words to communicate.
Bernie Siegel
#58. Open your mind to all possibilities and believe!
Bernie Siegel
#59. Every day is my best day ... I'm not going to have this moment again.
Bernie Siegel
#60. Every time I jog through the world, I am awed by what I find. On a winter morning, when it seems too cold and slippery for safe jogging or bicycling, I can still go out and experience the glory of sunlight turning icy branches into strings of sparkling diamonds.
Bernie Siegel
#61. The fundamental problem most patients have is an inability to love themselves, having been unloved by others during some crucial part of their lives.
Bernie Siegel
#62. We destroy ourselves when we stop feeling. If you bury your feelings within you, you become a graveyard.
Bernie Siegel
#63. The simple truth is that happy people generally don't get sick
Bernie Siegel
#64. There is no such thing as an incurable disease, only incurable people.
Bernie Siegel
#65. If God came in and said, I want you to be happy for the rest of your life, what would you do?
Bernie Siegel
#66. It takes more distress and poison to kill someone who has peace of mind and loves life.
Bernie Siegel
#68. If a person can turn from predicting illness to anticipating recovery, the foundation for cure is laid.
Bernie Siegel
#69. By relaxation, I don't mean falling asleep in front of the TV set or unwinding with friends. The kind I'm talking about is a quieting of mental activity and withdrawal of body and mind from external stimulation.
Bernie Siegel
#70. If you love people, you'll enjoy your life. If you don't, you won't love anything you do.
Bernie Siegel
#71. There have been many dreams which have been personal guides for me.
Bernie Siegel
#72. Feel your feelings. What you bring forth will save you.
Bernie Siegel
#74. I believe the reason we sleep is not just to allow our body to rest but that it is to allow this inner wisdom to speak to us through symbols. This includes the body or somatic problems as well as psychological ones. Dreams and drawings are useful in diagnosing physical conditions.
Bernie Siegel
#75. It is astounding how much the immune system is strengthened by reducing daily mental stress levels with either visualization or meditation. The other great tonic for the immune system is love - loving ourselves as well as others.
Bernie Siegel
#76. To me, animal communication seemed an insane idea, years ago; but my experience altered my life and my beliefs.
Bernie Siegel
#77. True inspiration overrides all fears. When you are inspired, you enter a trance state and can accomplish things that you may never have felt capable of doing.
Bernie Siegel
#78. No matter what the statistics say there is always a way.
Bernie Siegel
#79. Part of my evolution has been to learn how painful most people's childhoods are. They grow up not liking themselves, not loving themselves. Ask people if they were lovable the minute they were born, and watch them sit back and have to think about it. One lady said, 'I suppose so.' That's painful.
Bernie Siegel
#80. You can see people draw the past, present and future as well as dream about it. You go to bed at night and have a dream that says there's a lump in your right breast and the doctor who is foreign, with an accent tells you it's cancer.
Bernie Siegel
#81. If you watch how nature deals with adversity, continually renewing itself, you can't help but learn.
Bernie Siegel
#83. Compliments are the helium that fills everyone's balloon; they elevate the person receiving them so he or she can fly over life's troubles and land safely on the other side.
Bernie Siegel
#84. Feelings aroused by the touch of someone's hand, the sound of music, the smell of a flower, a beautiful sunset, a work of art, love, laughter, hope and faith - all work on both the unconscious and the conscious aspects of the self, and they have physiological consequences as well.
Bernie Siegel
#85. One of the best ways to change is to act as if you are the person you want to become. When you behave as if you are a different person, you change on a very basic level - even your physiology changes. When actors and actresses perform, their body chemistry is altered by the roles they play.
Bernie Siegel
#86. Information doesn't mean a thing to people without inspiration.
Bernie Siegel
#87. I love how Mother Theresa said she wouldn't attend an anti-war rally but if there was a peace rally to call her. So I realized it's not about waging a war against everybody's disease and diagnosis but rather about helping them live.
Bernie Siegel
#88. Your body loves you, but if you do not love your life, it will end it far sooner, thinking it is doing you a favor.
Bernie Siegel
#89. We are here to feel, wonder and gaze in awe at the world. Instead of just teaching our children how to use things and do things, I suggest we nourish their sense of wonder.
Bernie Siegel
#90. One cannot get through life without pain ... What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us.
Bernie Siegel
#91. If I were rewriting 'Love, Medicine & Miracles,' I might consider changing its title to 'The Side Effects of Cancer.' Healing is hard work, as is any change one must make in one's life. I and others have learned, however, that the side effects of cancer may not all be bad ones.
Bernie Siegel
#92. Most of us never stop to consider our blessings; rather, we spend the day only thinking about our problems. But since you have to be alive to have problems, be grateful for the opportunity to have them.
Bernie Siegel
#93. What a shame to be so afraid of failure that you stop living. My wife has a great one-liner about failure: "Never consider yourself a failure-you can always serve as a bad example." She is right. Failure can be a better teacher than success.
Bernie Siegel
#94. The #1 problem most patients face is the inability to love themselves
Bernie Siegel
#95. Miracles and angels are a part of our lives, so anticipate them and tune in through your quiet mind.
Bernie Siegel
#96. I believe that we are here to contribute love to the planet - each of us in our own way
Bernie Siegel
#98. We're all here for a limited amount of time, and life is difficult - not unfair, but difficult. The key is to really confront our fears because when we do, and when we look at them, we really begin to realize that we are capable of handling them.
Bernie Siegel
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top