Quotes from Rudolf Virchow

My politics were those of prophylaxis, my opponents preferred those of palliation.

It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation.

Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing more than medicine on a grand scale.

There can be no scientific dispute with respect to faith, for science and faith exclude one another.

Brevity in writing is the best insurance for its perusal.

If we would serve science, we must extend her limits, not only as far as our own knowledge is concerned, but in the estimation of others.

The task of science, therefore, is not to attack the objects of faith, but to establish the limits beyond which knowledge cannot go and found a unified self-consciousness within these limits.

As long as vitalism and spiritualism are open questions so long will the gateway of science be open to mysticism.

Laws should be made, not against quacks but against superstition.

Belief has no place as far as science reaches, and may be first permitted to take root where science stops.

Life itself is but the expression of a sum of phenomena, each of which follows the ordinary physical and chemical laws.

It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation.

Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing more than medicine on a large scale.

Medical education does not exist to provide student with a way of making a living, but to ensure the health of the community.

Medicine must go back to nature and a physician should be the high priest of nature.

The task of science is to stake out the limits of the knowable, and to center consciousness within them.

So unstable are the most plausible theories in the light of objective, factual knowledge

The absence of proof does not constitute the proof of absence.

Jeder Fortschritt, den eine Kirche in dem Aufbau ihrer Dogmen macht, führt zu einer Bändigung des freien Geistes; jedes neue Dogma verengt den Kreis des freien Denkens. Die Naturwissenschaft umgekehrt befreit mit jedem Schritte ihrer Entwicklung. Sie gestattet dem Einzelnen in vollem Maße wahr zu sein.

Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weigh life for life and see where the dead lie thicker, among the workers or among the privileged.

If popular medicine gave the people wisdom as well as knowledge, it would be the best protection for scientific and well-trained physicians.

Medical education does not exist to provide students with a way of making a living, but to ensure the health of the community.

Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weigh life for life and see where the dead lie thicker, among the workers or among the privileged.

Belief cannot be reckoned with in terms of science, for science and faith are mutually exclusive.