Top 120 Hippocrates Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Some patients, though conscious that their condition is perilous, recover their health simply through their contentment with the goodness of the physician.”

— Hippocrates

52. “The life so short, the craft so long to learn.”

— Hippocrates

53. “Silence is not only never thirsty, but also never brings pain or sorrow.”

— Hippocrates

54. “Those diseases which medicines do not cure, iron cures; those which iron cannot cure, fire cures; and those which fire cannot cure, are to be reckoned wholly incurable.”

— Hippocrates

55. “It’s more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has.”

— Hippocrates

56. “Rest as soon as there is pain.”

— Hippocrates

57. “That which is used – develops. That which is not used wastes away.”

— Hippocrates

58. “The patient must combat the disease along with the physician.”

— Hippocrates

59. “For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable.”

— Hippocrates

60. “Sleep and watchfulness, both of them, when immoderate, constitute disease.”

— Hippocrates

61. “Whoever wishes to investigate medicine should proceed thus: In the first place, consider the seasons of the year and what effect each of them produces.”

— Hippocrates

62. “Wine is an appropriate article for mankind, both for the healthy body and for the ailing man.”

— Hippocrates

63. “Get knowledge of the spine, for this is the requisite for many diseases.”

— Hippocrates

64. “Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand.”

— Hippocrates

65. “There are, in effect, two things, to know and to believe one knows; to know is science; to believe one knows is ignorance.”

— Hippocrates

66. “Each of the substances of a man’s diet acts upon his body and changes it in some way and upon these changes his whole life depends.”

— Hippocrates

67. “The human soul develops up to the time of death.”

— Hippocrates

68. “Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.”

— Hippocrates

69. “Medicine is of all the Arts the most noble; but, owing to the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who, inconsiderately, form a judgment of them, it is at present behind all the arts.”

— Hippocrates

70. “Time is that wherein there is opportunity, and opportunity is that wherein there is no great time.”

— Hippocrates

71. “A physician who is a lover of wisdom is the equal to a god.”

— Hippocrates

72. “In all abundance there is lack.”

— Hippocrates

73. “Look to the seasons when choosing your cures.”

— Hippocrates

74. “There is one common flow, one common breathing, all things are in sympathy.”

— Hippocrates

75. “What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself holding such things shameful to be spoken about.”

— Hippocrates

76. “An insolent reply from a polite person is a bad sign.”

— Hippocrates

77. “We must turn to nature itself, to the observations of the body in health and in disease to learn the truth.”

— Hippocrates

78. “What medicines do not heal, the lance will; what the lance does not heal, fire will.”

— Hippocrates

79. “The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.”

— Hippocrates

80. “The art has three factors, the disease, the patient, the physician. The physician is the servant of the art. The patient must cooperate with the physician in combatting the disease.”

— Hippocrates

81. “Physicians are many in title but very few in reality.”

— Hippocrates

82. “The dignity of a physician requires that he should look healthy, and as plump as nature intended him to be; for the common crowd consider those who are not of this excellent bodily condition to be unable to take care of themselves.”

— Hippocrates

83. “Old people have fewer diseases than the young, but their diseases never leave them.”

— Hippocrates

84. “From nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations.”

— Hippocrates

85. “And he will manage the cure best who has foreseen what is to happen from the present state of matters.”

— Hippocrates

86. “I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion.”

— Hippocrates

87. “Whoever is to acquire a competent knowledge of medicine, ought to be possessed of the following advantages: a natural disposition; instructionl a favorable place for the study; early tuition, love of labor; leisure.”

— Hippocrates

88. “Eunuchs do not take the gout, nor become bald.”

— Hippocrates

89. “The forms of diseases are many and the healing of them is manifold.”

— Hippocrates

90. “Of several remedies, the physician should choose the least sensational.”

— Hippocrates

91. “About medications that are drunk or applied to wounds it is worth learning from everyone; for people do not discover these by reasoning but by chance, and experts not more than laymen.”

— Hippocrates

92. “When sleep puts an end to delirium, it is a good symptom.”

— Hippocrates

93. “The brain of man, like that of all animals is double, being parted down its centre by a thin membrane. For this reason pain is not always felt in the same part of the head, but sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, and occasionally all over.”

— Hippocrates

94. “Where prayer, amulets and incantations work it is only a manifestation of the patient’s belief.”

— Hippocrates

95. “It is better to be full of drink than full of food.”

— Hippocrates

96. “I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.”

— Hippocrates

97. “A sensible man ought to think about that well being is the best of human blessings, and find out how by his personal thought to derive profit from his sicknesses.”

— Hippocrates

98. “When doing everything according to indications, although things may not turn out agreeably to indication, we should not change to another while the original appearances remain.”

— Hippocrates

99. “Opposites are cures for opposites.”

— Hippocrates

100. “The chief virtue that language can have is clarity.”

— Hippocrates