Becoming a doctor is not easy. As a medical student you are always busy with lectures, practical, essays, labs and endless work. You work a lot more than other people and don’t have as much time for holidays or vacations. It is a long path with a massive pay off at the end – you get to help others and contribute to society! But the journey is difficult and challenging. And you might face dark times and question your path.
That’s why we have come up with some fabulous medical student quotes. We hope they will encourage you during tough times.
Let these motivational medical student quotes to motivate you study hard.
Medical Student Quotes
1.”Qualities you need to get through medical school and residency: Discipline. Patience. Perseverance. A willingness to forgo sleep. A penchant for sadomasochism. Ability to weather crises of faith and self-confidence. Accept exhaustion as a fact of life. Addiction to caffeine a definite plus. Unfailing optimism that the end is in sight.” – Khaled Hosseini
2.”Finish last in your league and they call you idiot. Finish last in medical school and they call you a doctor.” – Abe Lemons
3.”Nobody just leaves medical school, especially given it’s fiercely competitive to get in. But I had a sister who was a doctor, another who was a pharmacist, a brother who was an engineer. So my parents already had sensible children who would be able to make an actual living, and I think they felt comfortable sacrificing their one strange child.” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
4.”In medical school, you’re taught to write in this convoluted, Latinate way. I knew the vocabulary as well as anyone, but I would write kidney instead of nephric. I insisted on using English.” – Ethan Canin
5.”My best friend in medical school was a magician. And we were shown an X-ray of a sword-swallower, and I tried it and failed. Then I got a sword-swallower as a patient, and he taught me.” – Hans Rosling
6.”You’re taught from the day you start medical school that you’re a god, that you can have power over life and death. So when your life starts to crumble, and the highest power you see is looking back in the mirror – and you know that power is flawed – it is very hard to get past that.” – Michael Palmer
7.”I never had a conscious fear of death, but I did have a conscious fear of sickness. By the time I completed medical school that fear was gone.” – Sherwin B. Nuland
8.”I teach in the medical school, the School of Public Health, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Business School. And it’s the best perch… because most of my work crosses boundaries.” – Michael Porter
9.”Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school – not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.” – Abraham Varghese
10.”They don’t like thinking in medical school. They memorize – that’s all they want you to do. You must not think.” – John Backus
11.”No one teaches you how to think about money in medical school or residency. Yet, from the moment you start practicing, you must think about it. You must consider what is covered for a patient and what is not.” – Atul Gawande
12.”You can’t go to medical school and come out and be like, ‘I’m going to be a dog catcher.’ That would be so pointless.” – Mike Birbiglia
13.”If you went to Harvard Medical School, chances are you’ll be a doctor at some place. There’s a career trajectory. Acting, there’s nothing. It’s constantly trying to procure jobs – it’s very disconcerting.” – Jesse Eisenberg
14.”I went to medical school because I wanted to ask the big questions. Do we have a soul? Does God exist? What happens after death?” – Deepak Chopra
15.”Stress and sleep deprivation had a funny way of liberating the mind from previously held truisms, replacing them with a more compliant desperation.” – David Z. Hirsch
16.”I saw my friends in medical school seeming to be more engaged with the real world. That provoked a sort of jealousy, and I decided to go to medical school after all.” – Harold E. Varmus
17.”I remembered that my grandfather had spent his teenage years in Shanghai and that he went back after he finished medical school to work there in a hospital. So I went back into my family archives and was able to find out his exact address; it was a street that was in the French Concession.” – Kevin Kwan
18.”I went to medical school after having decided to do so somewhere between my junior and senior year at Harvard – very late. I initially wanted to be an intellectual historian.” – Eric Kandel
19.”Sometimes we called one another by our future doctor names. We did it partly to be funny, but mostly because we liked it when people did it back to us.” – David Z. Hirsch
20.”The midpoint in medicine between excessive emotional involvement with patients and a complete lack of empathy is not a simple one to locate.” – Christine Montross
21.”Being a doctor, is not simply about having an understanding of anatomy and sickness, rather it is about having an understanding of true wellness and more importantly, it is about understanding the intensity of the concern of the patient’s next of kin.” – Abhijit Naskar
22.”When you are ready to quit, just think how good you will look in the white coat.” – Unknown
23.”Although I liked especially physics and mathematics for which I had considerable talent, I decided to study medicine. This profession had for me a strong emotional appeal, which was reinforced by having an uncle who was an excellent surgeon.” – Renato Dulbecco
24.”I began the study of medicine, impelled by a desire for knowledge of facts and of man. The resolution to do disciplined work tied me to both laboratory and clinic for a long time to come.” – Karl Jaspers
25.”I wanted to go out of fashion, to study medicine. I thought, you know, who needs fashion? How important is it if you wear a red dress and an orange jacket? It’s not, really.” – Alber Elbaz
26.”Medical education goal is to transform the student from a practitioner to a healer.” – Unknown
27.”For a while I thought about studying medicine at school and becoming a doctor because I’ve always been interested in psychology and how people’s minds operate. But I’m able to explore some of that as an actor and ultimately I think it seems more interesting.” – Rumer Willis
28.”He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.” – William Osler
29.”The only way to improve things for residents and patients is to have more residents. The only way to have more residents is to pay more for healthcare.” – Unknown
30.”Along the way, you will sometimes feel worn down and your cynicism taking over. But resist. Look for those in your community who are making healthcare better, safer, and less costly. Pay attention to them. Learn how they do it. And join with them.” – Atul Gawande
31.”Keep calm, study hard and become a doctor.” – Unknown
32.”Wherever the art of Medicine is loved, there is also a love of Humanity.” – Hippocrates
33.”…let me congratulate you on the choice of a calling which offers a combination of intellectual and moral interests found in no other profession.” – Sir William Osler
34.”I remind my fellows, residents and medical students that what we do is a privilege. People let us into the most intimate aspects of their lives, and they look to us to help guide them through very complex and delicate situations.” – Shikha Jain
35.”In our job, you will never go home at the end of the day thinking that you haven’t done something valuable and important.” – Suneel Dhand
Related: Quotes for Students
36.”As a caregiver, you see selfless acts every day.” – Dr. Raj Panjabi
37.“As a doctor, people will trust you, confide in you, and appreciate your efforts. You can do amazing things for people if you don’t let the system get you down.” – Wes Fischer, MD
38.”In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men.” – Cicero
39.”While the journey seems long and hard at the beginning with perseverance and dedication the rewards at the end last a lifetime.” – William R. Francis
40.”To solve a difficult problem in medicine, don’t study it directly, but rather pursue a curiosity about nature and the rest will follow. Do basic research.” – Roger Kornberg
41.”The awe of discovering the human body. The honor of being trusted to give advice. The gratitude for helping someone through a difficult illness. These things never grow old.” – Danielle Ofri, MD
42.”I would still do it again despite all the difficulty of training and roadblocks to just practice medicine. Truly is worth it!” – James A. Bowden, MD
43.”Wear the white coat with dignity and pride-it is an honor and privilege to get to serve the public as a physician.” – Bill H. Warren, MD
44.”You future doctors are off to an amazing, rewarding and exciting life.” – Major W. Bradshaw, MD
45.”I remember the feeling of joy, almost to tears, the day I discharged my first patient from the hospital and the tears that I can never hold back during the miracle of birth. That feeling is the reward for our hard work here [in medical school] and in years that follow… I can’t imagine being a doctor without it… I ask you to recall the vigor and happiness of our youths and then, imagine the beauty of that energy channeled into the care of another human being.” – John-Paul H. Dedam
46.”Anyone having to do with medicine will have looked at Frank Netter’s artwork… I decided I would make him my model… getting my degree in medical illustration and then going on to medical school.” – David Bolinsky
Related: Quotes to Help You Recover from Being Sick
47.”I trained initially as a physical chemist, and then, after becoming interested in biology, I went to medical school and learned how to be a physician. So, I’m a physician scientist.” – Francis Collins
48.”Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be. I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around, but he carried it off so well.” – Abraham Varghese
49.”The downside to becoming a doctor, I think, is it’s a very long process; four years of medical school, three years of internship, two years of residency, umpteen years of specialization, and then finally you get to be what you have trained almost all your life for.” – Jim Lee
50.”I was actually accepted into medical school in Italy. But then I wanted to come back and learn medicine in Germany. And while waiting, I decided to join a business school. I figured it would be useful for doctors to know some business as well!” – Jochen Zeitz
51.”Patients don’t put their trust in machines or devices. They put their trust in you.” – Margaret Hamburg
52.”Of course it is hard. It is supposed to be hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it. Hard is what makes it great.” – Unknown
53.”I got into medical school at the University of California in San Francisco and did well. A lot of smart kids in medical school, and believe me, I wasn’t nearly the smartest one, but I was the most focused and the happiest kid in medical school. In 1979, I graduated as the valedictorian and was honored with the Gold Cane Award.” – Richard Carmona
54.”My 94-year-old grandmother has always been so inspiring to me. She is kind, smart, brave, and independent. After graduating number one in her medical school class at a time when it was extremely rare for women to attend medical school, she worked with the World Health Organization in North Africa to eradicate tuberculosis.” – Kelsey Chow
55.”When I went to the University, the medical school was the only place where one could hope to find the means to study life, its nature, its origins, and its ills.” – Albert Claude
56.”Jews were asked when life begins. For them it’s when they finally graduate medical school.” – Evan Sayet
57.”Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a doctor.” – Unknown
58.”Student, you don’t study to past the test. You study to prepare for the day when you are the only thing between a patient and the grave.” – Mark Reid
59.”Medicine is only for those who can’t imagine doing anything else.” – Dr. Launda Grazette
60.”Don’t stop. One day you will be someone’s hope, someone’s hero.” – Unknown
61.”Stethoscope is not just an instrument. It’s a jewelry.” – Unknown
62.”The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” – Mahatma Gandhi
63.”Stethoscope is the only jewelry that can’t be earned by money. It can only be earned by passion and hard work.” – Unknown
64.”Studying medicine is like true love. You suffer, fail, learn again. Fight and grow but you never want to let it go.” – Unknown
65.”You didn’t choose medical, medical have chosen you. You have been selected because you can and you will be a great doctor.” – Unknown
66.”Tired? Of course, I’m. Do you think medicine is a joke? Quit? Are you kidding me? Do you think I am a loser?” – Unknown
67.”The chapter you are learning today is going to save somebody’s life tomorrow. Pay attention.” – Unknown
68.”Medicine is more than a career. It’s a lifestyle.” – Unknown
Related: Quotes about Surgery
Share these Medical Student Quotes this week
Yes, attending a medical school doesn’t give you any spare time. You spend hours in the labs. You are on call all the time. There are books to read. There are plenty of tests to attend.
But don’t give up. As mentioned in the above medical student quotes, each day is full of new learning. Each day brings you closer to your dream. Each day can motivate you.
These late nights, longs hours and hard work are worth the troubles. Isn’t it amazing that you will be a doctor at the end of this long journey? Then you will be serving others. You will be saving lives. Isn’t that you had always wanted?
I’m Alice Judy and AnQuotes is a fun hobby for me. We know that everyone loves a great quote and our mission here is simple – to be the best and most interesting quote site in the world! If you have quotes you would like us to cover, please contact us.
