Top 100 Bernie Siegel Quotes
#1. The American people are beginning to think in new ways about health and illness ... Bernie Siegel is helping to define and open up these new frontiers. In this sense he is in the best medical tradition.
Norman Cousins
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. Every day is my best day ... I'm not going to have this moment again.
Bernie Siegel
#5. Open your mind to all possibilities and believe!
Bernie Siegel
#6. Love and peace of mind do protect us. They allow us to overcome the problems that life hands us. They teach us to survive ... to live now ... to have the courage to confront each day.
Bernie Siegel
#7. Consciousness is non-local and does not depend on words to communicate.
Bernie Siegel
#8. 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
#9. Stories change people while statistics give them something to argue about.
Bernie Siegel
#10. When you love the unlovable and forgive the unforgivable, you're free.
Bernie Siegel
#11. 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
#12. Love is giving with no expectations ... Love cures, heals, and rewards two people: the lover and the beloved.
Bernie Siegel
#13. People have taught me what most doctors don't learn, in other words, when somebody does better than expected, the doctor will tell them they're doing very well and to keep it up. I learned to say, "You didn't die when you were supposed to so what's going on?", and they always had a story to tell me.
Bernie Siegel
#14. 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
#15. Relationships keep us alive and our lives meaningful.
Bernie Siegel
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. I wish medical schools helped us to analyze our healthy and unhealthy reasons for becoming doctors.
Bernie Siegel
#20. If we had no hope - for a cure, for winning the lottery, for falling in love, for the end of war, for being free of abuse, or for having food, warmth, clothing, and shelter - we would have no reason to go on. What you hope for doesn't matter, but rather the essence of hope itself.
Bernie Siegel
#21. 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
#22. Physicians need to be good technicians and know how to prescribe, but for healing to occur they also need to incorporate philosophy and spirituality into their treatment. We need to feel as well as think.
Bernie Siegel
#23. An awareness of one's mortality can lead you to wake up and live an authentic, meaningful life.
Bernie Siegel
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. Love and kindness are the basis of my religious beliefs. The rituals and outward signs are not as important as one's actions and deeds. Religion should be a path to God, not something to fight about.
Bernie Siegel
#27. I have learned to become not an M.D. but a 'C.D.' for the wounded people I meet. Yes, a 'Chosen Dad' who may not like their behavior but loves and reparents them and helps them to heal their lives and find self-worth and self-esteem and save their lives.
Bernie Siegel
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. I've learned to ask people, "You're doing very well so what are you doing? Let me tell other people." So what's made me who I am, my experience.
Bernie Siegel
#31. No matter what the statistics say there is always a way.
Bernie Siegel
#32. 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
#33. To me, animal communication seemed an insane idea, years ago; but my experience altered my life and my beliefs.
Bernie Siegel
#34. 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
#35. 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
#37. When guilt rears its ugly head confront it, discuss it and let it go. The past is over. It is time to ask what can we do right, not what did we do wrong. Forgive yourself and move on.
Bernie Siegel
#38. Feel your feelings. What you bring forth will save you.
Bernie Siegel
#39. There have been many dreams which have been personal guides for me.
Bernie Siegel
#40. The spiritual message is we lose our lives in pleasing others; if you're the good child who pleases Mommy and Daddy but internalizes anger, you're setting yourself up for disease.
Bernie Siegel
#41. Animal intuitives can diagnose an animal's physical health problems by listening to the animals.
Bernie Siegel
#42. If you love people, you'll enjoy your life. If you don't, you won't love anything you do.
Bernie Siegel
#43. 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
#44. If a person can turn from predicting illness to anticipating recovery, the foundation for cure is laid.
Bernie Siegel
#46. It takes more distress and poison to kill someone who has peace of mind and loves life.
Bernie Siegel
#47. If God came in and said, I want you to be happy for the rest of your life, what would you do?
Bernie Siegel
#48. There is no such thing as an incurable disease, only incurable people.
Bernie Siegel
#49. Our Creator has given us five senses to help us survive threats from the external world, and a sixth sense, our healing system, to help us survive internal threats.
Bernie Siegel
#50. The simple truth is that happy people generally don't get sick
Bernie Siegel
#51. We destroy ourselves when we stop feeling. If you bury your feelings within you, you become a graveyard.
Bernie Siegel
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. Having pets in the house helps everyone have a reverence for life.
Bernie Siegel
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. It's not about curing the disease, but healing the life; then the physical benefits come.
Bernie Siegel
#59. 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
#60. Money, financial matters were to help people, to help them survive, not to have a bigger house or a bigger car and that sort of thing, because I hear that from so many kids, they often don't know why their father won't spend more time with them.
Bernie Siegel
#61. I think some people do want to die, and they will get a disease. There are people who know their lives are so troubled, and their bodies are getting them out of here.
Bernie Siegel
#62. A surgeon is surrounded by people who are sick, discouraged, afraid, embittered, dying - but also courageous, loving, wise, compassionate and alive.
Bernie Siegel
#63. 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
#64. Doctors are busy playing God when so few of us have the qualifications. And besides, the job is taken.
Bernie Siegel
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. To me, God is an intelligent, loving, conscious energy and why do I say that? Well you need energy to create. You have to have a source. It's undifferentiated energy which has intelligence or it couldn't create.
Bernie Siegel
#70. By disregarding intuition in favor of science, or science in favor of instincts, we limit ourselves.
Bernie Siegel
#71. It is the experience of living that is important, not searching for meaning. We bring meaning by how we love the world.
Bernie Siegel
#72. Don't try to help people to 'not die', help them to enjoy life!
Bernie Siegel
#73. Thoughts are chemical. They can either kill us or cure us.
Bernie Siegel
#74. Life is a labor pain; we are here to give birth to ourself.
Bernie Siegel
#75. Don't do things to not die, do things to enjoy living. The by-product may be not dying.
Bernie Siegel
#76. Traditional doctors say I'm a mystic. I don't deny it.
Bernie Siegel
#77. 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
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. Hoping means seeing that the outcome you want is possible and then working for it.
Bernie Siegel
#81. 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
#82. I know patients who bring a dozen roses to the doctor's office. And, boy, the next visit, nobody forgets that. You come in and hey - 'Here's the lady who brought the roses' vs. 'Here's the lung cancer.'
Bernie Siegel
#83. Life is an opportunity to contribute love in your own way.
Bernie Siegel
#84. Live by your experience and do not let limited beliefs alter your life experience.
Bernie Siegel
#85. 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
#86. One's attitude towards oneself is the single most important factor in healing and staying well.
Bernie Siegel
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. We participate and are responsible for a lot of the things that happen to us. If you hate your job, you are much more likely to get sick and die at a younger age than someone who's happy at work and has a nice family life and is mentally well adjusted.
Bernie Siegel
#91. 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
#92. Anything that offers hope has the potential to heal.
Bernie Siegel
#93. Parents, teachers, clergy and physicians change lives with their words. It is hypnotic for a child or patient to hear an authority figure's words. As I am always sharing, 'wordswordswords' can become 'swordswordswords,' and we can kill or cure with either words or swords.
Bernie Siegel
#94. 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
#95. Refusal to hope is nothing more than a decision to die.
Bernie Siegel
#96. Unconditional love is the most powerful stimulant to the immune system.
Bernie Siegel
#97. The doctor that acts out of love doesn't burn out. He or she may get tired physically, but not emotionally.
Bernie Siegel
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. 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
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