Avicenna (Ibn Sina)
A polymath whose 'The Canon of Medicine' was a standard medical text for centuries and integrated Greek and Indian medical traditions.
Most quoted
"Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials."
— from The Canon of Medicine
"Medicine is a science from which one learns the states of the human body in health and disease, in order to preserve health when it exists and restore it when it has been lost."
— from The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb)
"The more you study, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you forget. The more you forget, the less you know. So why study?"
— from Attributed, often as a humorous paradox
All quotes by Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (356)
Knowledge is power, and I am a powerful man.
The more you know, the more you realize you don't know. The less you know, the more you think you know.
I have never seen a man who was wise enough to know that he was a fool.
The cure for ignorance is to ask questions.
When I am sick, I consult myself.
The physician should be able to predict the future, or at least pretend to.
There are two kinds of physicians: those who know and those who guess. I prefer to be the former.
The best medicine is a good physician.
If you want to live a long life, avoid physicians.
The wise man knows he is a fool, the fool thinks he is wise.
I have read the book of life, and it is full of errors.
To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
The soul, like the body, lives by what it feeds on.
When I was young, I thought I knew everything. Now that I am old, I know that I know nothing.
The more difficult the task, the greater the glory in accomplishing it.
The mind is the pilot of the soul.
What is learned in youth is carved in stone.
The physician must be a philosopher, a scientist, and an artist.
I have never met a man so ignorant that I could not learn something from him.
The greatest wisdom is to know oneself.
Contemporaries of Avicenna (Ibn Sina)
Other Medicines born within 50 years of Avicenna (Ibn Sina) (980–1037).