Top 40 Dean Ornish Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Our survival depends on the healing power of love, intimacy and relationships. As individuals. As communities. As a country. As a culture. Perhaps even as a species.”

— Dean Ornish

2. “An educated patient is empowered; thus, more likely to become healthy.”

— Dean Ornish

3. “People who are lonely and depressed are three to 10 times more likely to get sick and die prematurely than those who have a strong sense of love and community. I don’t know any other single factor that affects our health – for better and for worse – to such a strong degree.”

— Dean Ornish

4. “People don’t dislike change, they dislike being changed.”

— Dean Ornish

5. “We all know we’re going to die one day, but who wants to think about it? What’s sustainable is joy, pleasure and freedom.”

— Dean Ornish

6. “Joy of living is sustainable; fear of dying is not.”

— Dean Ornish

7. “Poor health is not caused by something you don’t have; it’s caused by disturbing something that you already have. Health is not something you need to get, it’s something you have already if you don’t disturb it.”

— Dean Ornish

8. “The need for love and intimacy is a fundamental human need, as primal as the need for food, water, and air.”

— Dean Ornish

9. “Stress is not so much what you do, but how you react to what you do.”

— Dean Ornish

10. “Even more than feeling healthy, most people want to feel free and in control.”

— Dean Ornish

11. “When I use the word spirituality, I don’t necessarily mean religion; I mean whatever it is that helps you feel connected to something that is larger than yourself.”

— Dean Ornish

12. “So the best combination for reversing heart disease is to exercise, stop smoking, eat a vegetarian diet, and practice stress management techniques – in other words, to follow the program.”

— Dean Ornish

13. “The healing power of love and relationships has been documented in an increasing number of well-designed scientific studies involving hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world.”

— Dean Ornish

14. “At a time when 20% of people in the US go to bed hungry each night and almost 50% of the world’s population is malnourished, choosing to eat more plant-based foods and less red meat is better for all of us-ourselves, our loved ones, and our planet.”

— Dean Ornish

16. “I don’t understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on cholesterol lowering drugs for the rest of their lives.”

— Dean Ornish

17. “Awareness-mindfulness-is the first step in healing. In Counterclockwise, Dr. Ellen Langer eloquently describes how becoming more aware of our beliefs and expectations allows us to powerfully transform our lives for the better. A pioneering, beautifully-written book.”

— Dean Ornish

18. “Someone once asked Swami Satchidananda, a spiritual teacher, “What are you, a Hindu?” “No,” he replied, “I’m an Undo. I’m trying to teach people how they can undo the patterns that cause damage to their minds and bodies so they can begin to heal.”

— Dean Ornish

19. “When I talk about forgiveness, I mean letting go, not excusing the other person or reconciling with them or condoning the behavior. Just letting go of your own suffering.”

— Dean Ornish

20. “Our genes are a predisposition, but our genes are not our fate,” I wrote to him. “If they were, then you’d be a victim, but you’re not – you’re one of the most powerful people on the planet.”

— Dean Ornish

21. “Listen, here’s what I think. I think we can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do. By what we deny ourselves. What we resist, and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include. – From the movie Chocolat.”

— Dean Ornish

22. “Meaning is malleable: take it out, you get nihilism and despair. Put it in, you get sacredness and something most special.”

— Dean Ornish

23. “Yet almost all of these techniques ultimately derive from yoga. It’s a testimony to the power of these techniques that entire careers have been built around different aspects of yoga, sometimes even renamed after the person who rediscovered that practice.”

— Dean Ornish

24. “The Internet has transformed many parts of our daily lives, touching everything from how we find information to how we go shopping, get directions, and even stay in touch with friends and family.”

— Dean Ornish

25. “Even if you can’t open your heart to people, open your heart to God; then you will know how to open your heart to people also.”

— Dean Ornish

26. “In general, losing weight is a good thing for those who are overweight, but it’s important to lose weight in a way that enhances your health rather than one that may compromise it.”

— Dean Ornish

27. “For example, the latest studies are showing that lifestyle changes are often actually better than drugs and surgery in treating and even reversing many of the most prevalent chronic diseases, including stable coronary heart disease and early-stage prostate cancer.”

— Dean Ornish

28. “Whether you’re six or sixty, if you go on a diet and lifestyle program and feel constrained, you’re likely to go off it sooner or later. Offering a spectrum of choices is much more effective; then, you feel free and empowered.”

— Dean Ornish

29. “But for many people, an even more motivating example than increasing blood flow to your brain and your heart can be found in The Game Changers, a powerful new documentary film produced by legendary filmmaker James Cameron.”

— Dean Ornish

30. “The importance of insulin is becoming more well recognized. Unfortunately, some people are writing books that fail to distinguish between simple and complex carbohydrates. They recommend that people minimize intake of carbohydrates and increase intake of protein, even high-fat, high-cholesterol animal proteins, which is most unwise.”

— Dean Ornish

31. “I’m a big admirer of Walter Willett’s work. I think he’s done some really important research. He and I agree on most things.”

— Dean Ornish

32. “I grew up in Texas, eating meat five times a day, and I liked meat. But I began being a vegetarian when I was 19 because I found that I felt better.”

— Dean Ornish

33. “In short, the more inwardly defined I became, the less I needed to succeed and the less stressed I felt. The less I needed success, the easier it came. The less I had to get, the more I got. The less I needed to acquire power, the more power I realized I already had; before I realized that, I used to give my power away.”

— Dean Ornish

34. “Curious patients are more receptive to new ideas, and those who engage their health practitioners in a dialogue are much more likely to adhere to these recommendations.”

— Dean Ornish

35. “When most people think about my work, they think about diet. To me, diet has always been the least interesting part of it.”

— Dean Ornish

36. “Although scientists can often be as resistant to new ideas as anyone, the process of science ensures that, over time, good ideas and theories prevail.”

— Dean Ornish

37. “I usually find that the process of discovery is more interesting than the answers.”

— Dean Ornish

38. “With everything that you can imagine at our fingertips, many of the social interactions that help tie people together in a community have faded away. Are communities traditionally built on relationships, trust and familiarity a thing of the past?”

— Dean Ornish

39. “I am as non-accepting of medical quackery and unscientific approaches as anybody else. I’ve grown up as a card-carrying scientist, and I know the power of science to answer questions, and for many questions I don’t know of anything better than scientific approaches to answer them.”

— Dean Ornish

40. “I’ve found that if I tell somebody ‘Eat this and don’t do that,’ it’s not only not helpful, it’s counterproductive because even more than being healthy, we want to feel free and in control, and as soon as somebody tells us to do something, there’s a tendency to do just the opposite.”

— Dean Ornish

41. “Love, social support, and intimacy. People who feel lonely, depressed, and isolated are three to ten times more likely to get sick and die prematurely from virtually all causes when compared to those who have strong feelings of love, connection and community. Chapter 7 describes how we can transform isolation into healing.”

— Dean Ornish