Leadership

Remember the Three Princes of Serendip who went out looking for treasure? They didn’t find what they were looking for, but they kept finding things just as valuable. That’s serendipity, and our business [drugs] is full of it.

I am not accustomed to saying anything with certainty after only one or two observations.

The pace of discovery is going unbelievably fast.

Advances in drug development have led to greater improvement in the quality of human life than advances in all other fields combined.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

Good information is the best medicine.

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity.

One sometimes finds what one is not looking for.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

If you think compliance is expensive, try non-compliance.

I must say, I spend a lot of my time these days trying to persuade people that controlled trials are the only way to get information that’s reliable about drugs.

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.

The greatest joy in life is to accomplish. It is the getting, not the having. It is the giving, not the keeping.

I have no ideology. My ideology is health.

There is so much more to be done; the patients are waiting.

One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.

The cures we want aren’t going to fall from the sky. We have to get ladders and climb up and get them.

I trust I may be enabled in the treatment of patients always to act with a single eye to their good.

Without drugs, physicians would struggle to find relevance, and patients would suffer without hope.

Drugs don’t work in patients who don’t take them.

It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions, but hard to get one single remedy.