Quotes and Sayings about Illness
"Newborn screening is a public health intervention that involves a simple blood test used to identify many life-threatening genetic illnesses before any symptoms begin."
- Lucille Roybal Allard
(Related: Health, Life, Blood, Public)
"Through their work with fetal tissue, researchers hope to find ways to harness embryonic stem cells which have the ability to become any type of human cell and could provide new treatments for many illnesses."
- Tom Allen
(Related: Work, Hope, Ability)
"I don't believe you have to have eating disorders and mental illness to screw up."
- Kirstie Alley
(Related: Eating, Illness)
"If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: God)
"I have a real problem with stillness. With just stopping and being quiet."
- Gillian Anderson
(Related: Being, Quiet)
"I have suffered from depression for most of my life. It is an illness."
- Adam Ant
(Related: Life, Depression, Illness)
"Through my illness I learned rejection. I was written off. That was the moment I thought, Okay, game on. No prisoners. Everybody's going down."
- Lance Armstrong
(Related: Thought, Illness, Rejection)
"An illness is like a journey into a far country; it sifts all one's experience and removes it to a point so remote that it appears like a vision."
- Sholem Asch
(Related: Experience, Vision, Country, Illness, Journey)
"My illness has taught me something about the nature of humanity, love, brotherhood and relationships that I never understood, and probably never would have. So, from that standpoint, there is some truth and good in everything."
- Lee Atwater
(Related: Nature, Love, Truth, Brotherhood, Humanity, Illness, Relationships)
"It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime."
- Lee Atwater
(Related: Truth, Country, Eye, Illness)
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
(Related: Canada, Illness, states, United)
"A man's illness is his private territory and, no matter how much he loves you and how close you are, you stay an outsider. You are healthy."
- Lauren Bacall
(Related: Illness, Man)
"Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore."
- Alan Bennett
(Related: Cancer, Illness)
"When something is moving you get that intake of breath and that stillness from the audience."
- Theodore Bikel
"Just like other illnesses, depression can be treated so that people can live happy, active lives."
- Tom Bosley
(Related: People, Depression)
"So we had life, death, illness, everything - every emotional involvement we had, we experienced. And I think that made what we had to do on stage, stronger. We got very much involved in what we were doing."
- Tom Bosley
(Related: Death, Life, Illness)
"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you."
- Rita Mae Brown
(Related: Americans, Friends, Illness, Sanity, Statistics, Suffering)
"Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle at the onset."
- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
(Related: People, Illness, Man)
"We saw in 2003 the beginnings of an outbreak of an illness called SARS. SARS ended up killing 800 people which is a significant number of deaths, but nowhere near as high as it could have been."
- Michael Burgess
(Related: People, Beginnings, Illness, Killing)
"Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness."
- Richard Carlson
(Related: Illness, Nothing, Stress)
"The good thing about having this illness is that it allows me to be a little bit crazy."
- Neil Cavuto
(Related: Illness)
"All countries should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans. Countries should remain on high alert for unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness and severe pneumonia."
- Margaret Chan
(Related: Countries, Illness, Now)
"In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you."
- Deepak Chopra
(Related: Chaos)
"In childhood I developed a serious throat infection, and my heart stopped beating. I recovered from that illness with a voice that boomed forth like Kate Smith's!"
- Patsy Cline
(Related: Heart, Childhood, Illness, Voice)
"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
- Irvin S. Cobb
(Related: Hope, Illness, Nothing)
"For too long we have swept the problems of mental illness under the carpet... and hoped that they would go away."
- Richard J. Codey
(Related: Illness, Problems)
"I don't really live like a musician myself. I think music is just something that I do, but I'd like to be doing lots of other things. I like to cure all kinds of illness."
- Ornette Coleman
(Related: Music, Cure, Illness)
"I remember once I read a book on mental illness and there was a nurse that had gotten sick. Do you know what she died from? From worrying about the mental patients not being able to get their food. She became a mental patient."
- Ornette Coleman
(Related: Food, Being, Illness)
"In this most powerful nation in the world, lack of access to health care should not force local and state governments, companies and workers into bankruptcy, while causing unnecessary illness and hospitalization."
- John Conyers
(Related: Health, Care, Force, Illness, Nation, State, Workers, World)
"Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Illness, Will)
"I have not missed a day from work because of illness since 1956."
- Kenneth H. Cooper
(Related: Work, Day, Illness)
"Most of the albums that have taken long have been related to illness and fatigue or producer problems."
- David Coverdale
(Related: Fatigue, Illness, Problems)
"I didn't want to do a zoo show. I didn't want to do a study of someone with mental illness. I just wanted to show someone who was trying to live their life."
- Daniel Craig
(Related: Life, Illness, Study, Trying, Want)
"A lot of people don't realize that depression is an illness. I don't wish it on anyone, but if they would know how it feels, I swear they would think twice before they just shrug it."
- Jonathan Davis
(Related: People, Depression, Illness)
"America had taken my father from me. And over most of the years of his illness, I gradually started feeling this support system from this country who-people grieving along with us."
- Patti Davis
(Related: Father, America, Country, Feeling, Illness, Support, Years)
"A lot of our entertainment throws into detail the stagnation and illness of how we live today-it's sad and it's sick... and it's profitable."
- Heather Donahue
(Related: Detail, Entertainment, Illness, Today)
"Since my illness, I've felt the presence of my angels."
- Fran Drescher
(Related: Angels, Illness)
"For most of the history of our species we were helpless to understand how nature works. We took every storm, drought, illness and comet personally. We created myths and spirits in an attempt to explain the patterns of nature."
- Ann Druyan
(Related: History, Nature, Illness, Myths, Spirits)
"I still when I wake up hit the ground running; and having an illness, I'm only one of hundreds of thousands of people that live with an illness, and I'm just in awe of the bravery and dignity of the people I see at the hospital."
- Karen Duffy
(Related: People, Bravery, Dignity, Illness, Running)
"I did as much research as I could and I took ownership of this illness, because if you don't take care of your body, where are you going to live?"
- Karen Duffy
(Related: Body, Care, Illness, Ownership, Research)
"Concealing an illness is like keeping a beach ball under water."
- Karen Duffy
(Related: Beach, Illness, Water)
"I believe that all the important people in my life prior to 1982 were victimized by my illness."
- Patty Duke
(Related: Life, People, Illness)
"I believe that before anybody makes the journey to the other side, we have to know on a soul level that we are leaving, whether it's an accident or illness, and we prepare ourselves to a certain degree that we won't be there in the future."
- John Edward
(Related: Soul, Accident, Future, Illness, Journey)
"The sound of 'gentle stillness' after all the thunder and wind have passed will the ultimate Word from God."
- Jim Elliot
(Related: God, Sound, Will, Wind, Word)
"We will continue to do all we can to protect the public health against these dietary supplements that have been found to cause serious illness and injury."
- Andrew von Eschenbach
(Related: Health, Cause, Illness, Injury, Public, Will)
"They show that roughly two-thirds of a group of neurotic patients will recover or improve to a marked extent within about two years of the onset of their illness, whether they are treated by means of psychotherapy or not."
- Hans Eysenck
(Related: Illness, Will, Years)
"Fear is a question: What are you afraid of, and why? Just as the seed of health is in illness, because illness contains information, your fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if you explore them."
- Marilyn Ferguson
(Related: Health, Fear, Illness, Information, Self, Treasure)
"I'm fine, but I'm bipolar. I'm on seven medications, and I take medication three times a day. This constantly puts me in touch with the illness I have. I'm never quite allowed to be free of that for a day. It's like being a diabetic."
- Carrie Fisher
(Related: Being, Day, Illness)
"Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one."
- Anatole France
(Related: Acceptance, Neurosis, Risk)
"Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen - that stillness becomes a radiance."
- Morgan Freeman
(Related: Life, Learning)
"It's what I learn from the great actors that I work with. Stillness. That's all and that's the hardest thing."
- Morgan Freeman
(Related: Work, Actors)
"Still, it can be more effective to accomplish what you need to accomplish with the minimum effort. Watch Anthony Hopkins. He doesn't appear to be doing anything. He is so still that you can't see him working, but you are drawn into his character through his very stillness."
- Morgan Freeman
(Related: Character, Effort)
"Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to talking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young."
- Sigmund Freud
(Related: Illness, Talking, Will)
"MS is not really a degenerative illness. It is not fatal, nor is it always progressive."
- Annette Funicello
(Related: Illness)
"My biggest excuse to others and myself was that I had writer's block, as if it was some kind of illness."
- Mary Garden
(Related: Illness, Writer)
"This illness made it impossible for me to give my best effort to our audience, but now that it's been identified, I'm looking forward to a complete, quick recovery and to get back out there with John as soon as possible."
- Daryl Hall
(Related: Effort, Illness, Now, Quick)
"A systemic cleansing and detox is definitely the way to go after each holiday. It is the key to fighting high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, and other health-related illnesses."
- Lee Haney
(Related: Health, Heart, Blood, Cancer, Disease, Fighting, Holiday, Key, Pressure)
"Illness strikes men when they are exposed to change."
- Herodotus
(Related: Change, Men, Illness)
"A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses."
- Hippocrates
(Related: Health, Thought, Blessings, Man)
"A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy."
- Howard Hodgkin
(Related: Artists, Energy, Illness)
"Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good breeding."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
(Related: Breeding)
"Advances in technology and in our understanding of illness and disease together with an expanded workforce and greater resources will allow us to provide more services to a higher quality."
- John Hutton
(Related: Technology, Quality, Disease, Illness, Understanding, Will)
"Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength."
- Aldous Huxley
(Related: Travel, God, Soul, Heart, Strength, Desire, Hunger, Man, May, Mind, Road)
"The time to read is any time: no apparatus, no appointment of time and place, is necessary. It is the only art which can be practiced at any hour of the day or night, whenever the time and inclination comes, that is your time for reading; in joy or sorrow, health or illness."
- Holbrook Jackson
(Related: Art, Health, Time, Day, Illness, Joy, Night, Reading, Sorrow)
"They're trying to tell us that we're not right, so we have to buy their products. The number one cause of mental illness is not knowing who you are and you can't know who you are if you don't spend time honoring yourself, and living in the present."
- Naomi Judd
(Related: Time, Cause, Illness, Living, Present, Right, Trying)
"Once I knew only darkness and stillness... my life was without past or future... but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living."
- Helen Keller
(Related: Life, Heart, Darkness, Future, Living, Past, Word)
"A transfer of money should never be involved in this profound situation. Although illness is profound, too, but medicine's a business today. It's a business."
- Jack Kevorkian
(Related: Business, Money, Illness, Medicine, Today)
"We live in an almost perfect stillness and work with incredible urgency."
- Rem Koolhaas
(Related: Work)
"They have been deprived nutritionally, or some illness has not been picked up, or they have not been screened for vision or hearing defects, or they have not had some kind of a chronic illness or error of metabolism picked up."
- C. Everett Koop
(Related: Vision, Error, Hearing, Illness)
"Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy."
- Karl Kraus
(Related: Illness, Psychoanalysis, Therapy)
"Old age is not a disease - it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses."
- Maggie Kuhn
(Related: Age, Strength, Disappointments, Disease, Old, Trials)
"You can die of the cure before you die of the illness."
- Michael Landon
(Related: Cure, Illness)
"Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one. It's a drug. It distorts reality, and that's the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw."
- Fran Lebowitz
(Related: Love, Illness, Reality, Romantic)
"We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love."
- Madeleine L'Engle
(Related: Love, Illness, Result)
"I mean, I'm 48 years old and I've been through a lot in my life - you know, loss, whether it be death, illness, separation. I mean, the failed expectations... We all have dreams."
- Annie Lennox
(Related: Dreams, Life, Death, Expectations, Illness, Loss, Old, Separation, Years)
"I was diagnosed with the illness right before the 1995 World Cup."
- Jonah Lomu
(Related: Illness, Right, World)
"I still have in my memory, almost agonizing impressions of a serious illness which I had when I was about eight years old. Those about me called it scarlet fever, and its very name seemed to have a diabolical quality."
- Pierre Loti
(Related: Quality, Illness, Memory, Name, Old, Years)
"Factions are a sign of illness in a party."
- Ernest Mandel
(Related: Illness, Party)
"One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual."
- Thomas Mann
(Related: Idea, Illness, Man)
"One has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual."
- Thomas Mann
(Related: Idea, Illness, Man)
"Please believe that I do this because I am convinced that my illness cannot be helped for any length of time and I cannot bear to be a burden on anyone any longer."
- Susannah McCorkle
(Related: Time, Burden, Illness)
"What is the natural reaction when told you have a hopeless mental illness? That diagnosis does you in; that, and the humiliation of being there. I mean, the indignity you're subjected to. My God."
- Kate Millett
(Related: God, Being, Illness)
"Everybody believes in psychiatry; it's supposed to be for our own good. Let psychiatry prove that anybody has an illness, and I'd concede, but there is no physical proof."
- Kate Millett
(Related: Illness, Proof, Psychiatry)
"You have this mounting aggressive ignorance with the rabbit's foot of their particular religion. You don't really have any kind of spiritual law, just a kind of a rabid mental illness. The songs are a little slice of life."
- Joni Mitchell
(Related: Life, Religion, Ignorance, Illness, Law, Songs, Spiritual)
"If there is illness in your home, do you not need a doctor from outside? If your home catches on fire, do you not need fire fighters from outside? God has sent me to America in the role of a doctor, in the role of a fire fighter."
- Sun Myung Moon
(Related: Home, God, America, Fire, Illness)
"Once my doctor began treating my kidney disease, my greatest challenge was the constant exhaustion. Fortunately, my doctor explained that anemia was causing my exhaustion and that people with serious illnesses, like kidney disease, may be at increased risk for anemia."
- Alonzo Mourning
(Related: People, Challenge, Disease, Exhaustion, May, Risk)
"Without anxiety and illness I should have been like a ship without a rudder."
- Edvard Munch
(Related: Anxiety, Illness)
"The difference between a healthy person and one who is mentally ill is the fact that the healthy one has all the mental illnesses, and the mentally ill person has only one."
- Robert Musil
(Related: Difference, Fact)
"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish it's source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."
- Anais Nin
(Related: Love, Death, Blindness, Errors, Illness, Wounds)
"I'd read things, like people criticizing me. But no one likes to read stuff about that, and probably the main thing that was getting to me was me mum's illness."
- Jack Osbourne
(Related: People, Illness)
"When there's a terrible illness like AIDS sweeping through, you help people."
- Bernadette Peters
(Related: People, Help, Illness)
"Illness has always brought me nearer to a state of grace."
- Abbe Pierre
(Related: Grace, Illness, State)
"I did not fully understand the dread term 'terminal illness' until I saw Heathrow for myself."
- Dennis Potter
(Related: Illness)
"It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body."
- Marcel Proust
(Related: Knowledge, Body, Illness, Moments)
"Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey."
- Marcel Proust
(Related: Knowledge, Illness, Kindness, Pain, Promise)
"Art is a kind of illness."
- Giacomo Puccini
(Related: Art, Illness)
"Though bitter, good medicine cures illness. Though it may hurt, loyal criticism will have beneficial effects."
- Sima Qian
(Related: Criticism, Hurt, Illness, May, Medicine, Will)
"In opposition to this detachment, he finds an image of man which contains within itself man's dreams, man's illness, man's redemption from the misery of poverty - poverty which can no longer be for him a sign of the acceptance of life."
- Salvatore Quasimodo
(Related: Life, Dreams, Acceptance, Illness, Man, Misery, Opposition, Poverty)
"The easiest time to cure an illness is before it is accepted as a part of the self-image."
- Jane Roberts
(Related: Time, Cure, Illness, Self)
"Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness."
- Mark Rothko
(Related: Art, Purpose, Spirit)
"What some of us believe is that it is possible that if chemicals are related to Gulf War illness that some of the more severe symptoms may not erupt until 10 or 20 years down the line."
- Bernard Sanders
(Related: War, Illness, May, Years)
"I don't hide my feelings, but when it comes to illness, I guess I don't panic. My father was the same way. I'm the provider for the family and the caretaker. If I panic, who is anybody going to run to?"
- Curt Schilling
(Related: Family, Father, Feelings, Illness)
"Serious illness doesn't bother me for long because I am too inhospitable a host."
- Albert Schweitzer
(Related: Illness)
"I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Illness, Worth)
"I don't think there is one cause of Gulf War illness."
- Christopher Shays
(Related: War, Cause, Illness)
"But Gulf War Syndrome is not one cause, not one illness. It is many causes, many illnesses."
- Christopher Shays
(Related: War, Cause, Causes, Illness)
"The secret of learning to be sick is this: Illness doesn't make you less of what you were. You are still you."
- Tony Snow
(Related: Illness, Learning)
"Societies need to have one illness which becomes identified with evil, and attaches blame to its victims."
- Susan Sontag
(Related: Blame, Evil, Illness, Victims)
"Cases of sickness made up a very small percentage which in my opinion was normal. However, propaganda pamphlets dropped from aircraft were telling the workers to feign illness, and detailed instructions were given to them on how to do it."
- Albert Speer
(Related: Illness, Opinion, Propaganda, Sickness, Workers)
"What we have to get clear to kids is that when you offer your stillness and open yourself to the experience of music, it pays you back more than you give."
- David Ogden Stiers
(Related: Experience, Music, Kids, Open)
"No further evidence is needed to show that 'mental illness' is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be elucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious."
- Thomas Szasz
(Related: Nature, Purpose, Illness, Name, Obvious)
"There are psychological repercussions to illness and we need a little more help to get through the effects not only on the afflicted but on the family. And I think there's even a place for humor in that."
- Alan Thicke
(Related: Humor, Family, Help, Illness)
"As much success came to him, my father stayed true to his promise. He built the hospital to help the most helpless children with catastrophic illnesses."
- Marlo Thomas
(Related: Success, Father, Children, Help, Promise)
"The strongest predictor of unhappiness is anyone who has had a mental illness in the last 10 years. It is an even stronger predictor of unhappiness than poverty - which also ranks highly."
- Polly Toynbee
(Related: Illness, Poverty, Unhappiness, Years)
"The near stillness recalls what is forgotten, extinct angels."
- Georg Trakl
(Related: Angels)
"When a man is ill nothing is so important to him as his own illness."
- Anthony Trollope
(Related: Illness, Man, Nothing)
"I've got asthma. When I was 17 I forgot to take my medication and was taken to a hospital for almost two weeks. After that I've taken better care of my illness."
- Ville Valo
(Related: Care, Illness)
"Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made."
- Gore Vidal
(Related: Time, Virtue, Literature, World, Writers)
"Besides, wouldn't it be wonderful if no one ever had to worry about the random cruelty of fatal illness or the woes of old age attacking them or their loved ones?"
- Joan D. Vinge
(Related: Age, Cruelty, Illness, Old, Worry)
"I think illness is a family journey, no matter what the outcome. Everybody has to be allowed to process it and mourn and deal with it in their own way."
- Marcia Wallace
(Related: Family, Illness, Journey)
"People who cannot find time for recreation are obliged sooner or later to find time for illness."
- John Wanamaker
(Related: Time, People, Illness, Recreation)
"If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else."
- Simone Weil
(Related: Day, Illness, Misfortune, Poverty, Suffering)
"What worse illness can there be than acute conventionality. You should pray every night that you don't wake up with it."
- George Weinberg
(Related: Conventionality, Illness, Night)
"Women's courage is rather different from men's. The fact that women have to bring up children and look after husbands makes them braver at facing long-term issues, such as illness. Men are more immediately courageous. Lots of people are brave in battle."
- Mary Wesley
(Related: Men, Women, People, Courage, Battle, Children, Fact, Husbands, Illness)
"My mother's illness fitted into this protest against the treatment of the sick who could not pay, the inefficiency of commercialism, the waste, the extravagance, and the poverty."
- Ellen Wilkinson
(Related: Mother, Commercialism, Extravagance, Illness, Inefficiency, Poverty, Protest, Treatment, Waste)
"To the fantastic mental illness of Rationalism, hard facts are regrettable things, and to talk about them is to create them."
- Francis Parker Yockey
(Related: Facts, Illness, Talk)