Joseph Murray

I still have a vivid memory of my excitement when I first saw a chart of the periodic table of elements. The order in the universe seemed miraculous.

Blanket objection is not very reasonable to me - any effort to control scientific advances is doomed to fail.

Post-operatively the transplanted kidney functioned immediately with a dramatic improvement in the patient's renal and cardiopulmonary status. This spectacular success was a clear demonstration that organ transplantation could be life-saving.

Service to society is the rent we pay for living on this planet.

My only wish would be to have 10 more lives to live on this planet. If that were possible, I'd spend one lifetime each in embryology, genetics, physics, astronomy and geology. The other lifetimes would be as a pianist, backwoodsman, tennis player, or writer for the 'National Geographic.'

I wanted to be a surgeon, possibly influenced by the qualities of our family doctor who cared for our childhood ailments.

You cannot stop the human mind from working.

It's the best time ever to be a doctor because you can heal and treat conditions that were untreatable even a few years ago.

Work is a prayer. And I start off every morning dedicating it to our Creator.

If you're going to worry about what people say, you're never going to make any progress.