Cancer quotes
1.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside cancer — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Think about it: Look at the strides of awareness and treatment and tests that women have had with breast cancer, that the gay community has had with AIDS, because they're active and they talk about it."
"Colds, ulcers, flu, and cancer are things we get. Schizophrenia is something we are."
"She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark blue and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar."
"Do we do away with protecting of the American people with pre - to make sure that if you have an illness you can get insurance? Do we make sure that young people stay on their parents' health insurance? Do we make sure that there are no caps if you're dealing with cancer and you deal with preexisting conditions? It goes without saying that those patient protections have got to stay in place."
"Activating oxygen can produce compounds called radicals that put oxidative stress on cells. Such stress could ultimately lead to cancer and other diseases."
"Me: Well, you see, I, uh, I'm a cancer survivor. Person #1: And how's that working out for you? Me: Well, you see, I, uh, used to have leukemia. Person #2: Dude, how come you're not, like, BALD? Me: Well, you see, I, uh, I had acute lymphocytic lymphoma when I was five. Person #3: Whoa. THAT must'a sucked. I once had my tonsils out."
"That was the worst part about having cancer, sometimes: The physical evidence of disease separates you from other people."
"Because we are interested in promoting wellness, we will integrate medicine with performing arts, arts and crafts, agriculture, recreation, nature, and social service."
"Laughter boosts the immune system and helps the body fight off disease, cancer cells as well as viral, bacterial and other infections. Being happy is the best cure of all diseases!"
"It's so important to encourage the use of sun cream, tan in a bottle and the disuse of sun beds which are known world-wide as causes of skin cancer."
"I was hitting .360 when I was diagnosed. I didn't forget how to play while I was recovering. I don't know if the cancer is gone for good. I don't think anyone ever knows, but no one is going to steal my joy for as along as I'm able to play baseball."
"The whole idea of what is evidence for causation in epidemiology cannot be separated from tTindustry understood that if they could raise doubt about how you could conclude something caused cancer, that they put so much effort into getting so many receptive public health authorities to say, "Well, causation requires that these five things be met." So that is, in fact, nonsense."
"My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a 'race' life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist."
"Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centred and even solipsistic."
"Women smirk at baldness. How adorable would they find it if they began to lose their breasts in their late twenties? If both tits just shrunk up - unevenly I might add - and eventually turned into wine-cork nubs. Then it would be a different story. Then men would get the pity that they deserve. As far as I'm concerned, baldness is the male breast cancer only worse, because almost everyone gets it. True, it's not life threatening. Just social-life threatening. But in New York City, there is no difference."
"Ninety percent of cancers are curable in stage one. We spend billions of dollars and over 40 years searching for a cure, and we're not really that close. So why aren't we teaching people the only cure we have now? Early detection is one sh**ty year, versus the rest of your life."
"A poetess who had died young of cancer had said in one of her poems that for her, on sleepless nights, 'the night offers toads and black dogs and corpses of the drowned."
"When you have feelings like sadness or anger about your cancer or your plight, to mask them is to lead an artificial life."
"Social reform is the desperate decision to remove corns from a person suffering from cancer."
"A conquered nation is like a man with cancer: he can think of nothing else."
