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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"I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die.)"
"Hate is just as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Many of our inner conflicts are rooted in hate. This is why the psychiatrists say, "Love or perish." Hate is too great a burden to bear."
"Bring down Mike Mann and we can bring down the IPCC, they reckoned. It is a classic technique for the deniers movement, I have discovered, and I don't mean only those who reject the idea of global warming but those who insist that smoking doesn't cause cancer or that industrial pollution isn't linked to acid rain."
"If you have a patient in a doctor's office who's just been told they have terminal cancer but there's this operation they could perform right now that might save their lives. ... They have a 90 percent chance of surviving the operation — if you tell them that, they respond one way. If you tell them ... that they have a 10 percent chance of being killed by the operation, they are about three times less likely to have the operation."
"A lot of times I say to myself, "I wished I could be worthy of all the compliments that people give me sometimes." I'm not inventing anything that's going to stop cancer or muscular dystrophy or anything, but I like to feel that my time and talent is always there for the people that need it. When someone do say something negative, most times I think about it, but it don't bother me that much."
"The degree of polarization that currently exists in Washington is such where I think it's fair to say if I presented a cure for cancer, getting legislation passed to move that forward would be a nail-biter."
"Growth that adds volume without improving productivity is fat. Growth that diminishes productivity is cancer."
"Nothing I did contributed to me having cancer, so I can't sit back and say, 'Oh why me.' Why not me? Why does tragedy always have to hit someone else?"
"The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert."
"My whole approach to marriage is simple: my wife will do something that drives me insane, I won't say anything, and then, later, I'll die of cancer."
"That's all we had when I was a kid: Robitussin. No matter what you got, Robitussin better handle it. "Daddy, I got asthma." "Robitussin." "I got cancer." "Robitussin." "I broke my leg." Daddy poured Robitussin on it. "Yeah, boy, let that 'tussin get in there. Yeah, boy, let that 'tussin get on down to the bone. The 'tussin ought to straighten out the bone.""
"Don’t ask a writer what he’s working on. It’s like asking someone with cancer on the progress of his disease."
"There were silences in my head. I could abandon myself completely to the pleasure of multiple relationships, to the beauty of the day, to the joys of the day. It was as if a cancer in me had ceased gnawing me. The cancer of introspection."
"Black people loving and losing is something we don’t see enough of. We’re always in these heightened situations like something big is happening, something funny or something violent. And you know what? Sometimes we die of breast cancer or a broken heart. Things happen that are just not being explored cinematically. It’s time we reinvigorated that type of film."
"I hope that other women can benefit from my experience. Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people’s hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness. But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer, and then take action... It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know that they have strong options. Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of."
"In 2012, I was diagnosed with melanoma - skin cancer - and had to get surgery on my left foot. I was out for four weeks - no dancing, no walking, nothing! It was horrible, but it taught me patience and to never take for granted the simple things we have."
"I don't inhale because it gives you cancer, but I look so incredibly handsome with a cigarette that I can't not hold one."
"As a cancer survivor, I am very aware of how many wasted minutes I don't have. The surest way to waste what is left of your life is to worry about what might happen or what might have been."
"It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats."
"Upon hearing the results of her breast examination, the First Lady said - "I guess it's my turn.""
