Top 110 Quotes & Sayings by Vivek Murthy - Page 2

Sometimes when you get sick and you go to the doctor, it can feel like you didn't get your money's worth if you don't come away with a pill. I've had many, many conversations with patients who I've cared for over the years about why it's actually in some cases better not to go home with antibiotics.

When I was younger, my family suddenly and unexpectedly lost all of our life savings to a man we had trusted as a friend. The financial loss was difficult, especially because my sister and I were both in college. But the breach of trust was even more painful.

I think of emotional well-being as a resource within each of us that allows us to do more and to perform better. That doesn't mean just the absence of mental illness. It's the presence of positive emotions that allows us to be resilient in the face of adversity.

If you're very introverted, you prefer to spend much of your time alone, and when you do connect, you'd rather get together with one or two close friends than face a crowd.

Our health care workers are the heroes of the Covid-19 response.

It is true that there are some parents who have concerns about vaccines, but while we hear about these concerns a lot in the media, I don't want people to think that the majority of parents out there do not believe in vaccines and then most kids aren't getting vaccinated. In fact, it's exactly the opposite.

We can no longer remain within our exam rooms and ignore what happens in our communities. As physicians and dentists, we must have a presence in both places. Our sacred responsibility is both to help the patient in front of us and also to safeguard the health of the nation.

Many people feel that if they're lonely, that means that they're not likable or that they're broken in some way.

Arranged marriages are ones where you got to learn who the person is after you actually get married, which can be challenging.

Despite growing up in very poor circumstances, my father had big dreams.

I believe that inspiration is one of the most powerful forces in life. In career and in relationships, it's worth searching for the path that inspires you. Pursuing such a path often entails risk - it may involve making a big change in what you're doing - but the career risks we regret most are the ones we don't take.

My father grew up quite poor actually in a small farming village in South India. His grandfather was a farmer, his father was a farmer, and he was expected to be a farmer as well - his life took a different path.

We know that chronic loneliness has consequences. It certainly depresses our mood. And in terms of our health, people who struggle with loneliness also have an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and anxiety. Loneliness is also associated with a shorter lifespan.

My mother was from a middle-class background.

Not all social interaction is uplifting.

Empathy has the power to bring together people who would otherwise never meet. It has the power to teach us and to reach us in moments of isolation when we think nobody understands.

I do not intend to use the Surgeon General's Office as a bully pulpit for gun control.

Emotions are a source of power, and that's what science tells us. But many people I encounter have been led to think of emotions as a source of weakness.

It's easy to say that health is all about personal responsibility and we should all make good decisions for ourselves, but the reality is far more complicated. We know that in the case of motor vehicle accidents, how other people drive makes a difference in how safe you are.

If you've ever had the experience of being in conversation with someone when they were fully present, listening deeply to you when you're sharing with them, you know that five minutes of a fully present conversation like that can be more powerful than 30 minutes of distracted conversation.

I want to work with faith-based leaders to address the negative attitudes that are still too often associated with mental illness, attitudes that hold people back from getting the help that they need.

When I look at the patients that I've cared for with mental illness, I know that many of them took years to come forward and tell somebody that they were in pain and that they needed help.

My journey to working on loneliness was certainly not an expected one or planned one.

We don't do enough to help older people recognize how much they matter.

So my weakness is sweets. I like bread pudding and cheesecake in particular.

While there are relatively few extreme introverts or extroverts, most of us lean in one direction or the other. If we lean more toward introversion, we'll generally prefer less social activity than more extroverted people. One inclination is not 'better' than another, but our culture can make it seem as if extroverts have a social advantage.

I can learn a lot from reading briefing books and talking to experts, but that pales in comparison to what I can learn from going out and talking to people about what they're actually experiencing and hearing about their ideas.

When I began my tenure as surgeon general, I did not intend to focus on emotional well-being.

Unlike many other illnesses, what I find profoundly empowering about addressing loneliness is that the ultimate solution to loneliness lies in each of us. We can be the medicine that each other needs. We can be the solution other people crave. We are all doctors and we are all healers.

Our nation absolutely has what it takes to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic that's claimed tens of thousands of our loved ones. We have the talent, resources and technology.

Most parents vaccinate their kids. That is the bottom line.

We will not solve the addiction problem in America if we don't address social connection.

I have experienced loneliness at many, many points in my life and felt this profound sense of shame about it - all the years when I was a child that I struggled with feeling lonely when I was scared to go to school and petrified of walking into the elementary school cafeteria because I was worried I wouldn't have anyone to sit with.

A prevention-based society is one in which every institution, whether they're a hospital or a clinic, or a school, an employer or a faith-based organization, recognizes and embraces the role that it can play in improving health.

There's a tremendous sense of shame that people who are lonely feel. I say that as someone who felt ashamed of being lonely as a child and even at points during adulthood.

When I went through my confirmation hearing to serve as surgeon general they asked me what my priorities would be and I didn't list loneliness in that priority list because it was not one at the time.

We can experience an erosion of self-esteem when we're lonely, as we come to believe that it's because we're not likable or because something is broken inside of us. And that can just compound that loneliness further and further.

When you're in a pocket with low vaccination rates, that's when you find yourself at greater risk of getting measles.

When people tell you that you're less-than and that you don't matter and that you're inferior, you internalize some of that.

Well, the responsibility of the surgeon general is to make sure that the public has access to science and access to it in a way that is understandable and that is applicable to their everyday lives.

Drug addiction is an incredibly difficult challenge to manage on one's own. When I think of all the stories I've heard from people, the common denominator is that they all were ultimately able to find somebody who was willing to support them. Maybe it was someone they knew, like a parent or a sibling or a friend; other times it was a treatment center with a compassionate staff who didn't give up on them. That made all the difference.

Most people think that you need to be healthy in order to happy.

Drug addiction is tearing our communities and our country apart, and until we decide we're going to think differently about it, until we decide that we're going to invest as a country in prevention and treatment, until we decide that as individuals we're going to step up and do our part to address this epidemic, we're not going to solve this.

A lot of people have misconceptions about what the surgeon general does.

I think people often forget how powerful they are. Sometimes it just takes one voice to save a life. When we speak up we can not only change a life or save a life, but we can also make it possible for other people to speak up. If we harness the collective power of people's voices around America to address the opioid epidemic, I have no doubt that we can overcome it.

I have to be careful when I'm around sweets.

Being Indian-American, I have tremendous potential to grow facial hair.

The surgeon general is responsible for sharing scientifically-based information with the public so that they can improve their health. But I will say personally that my goal as surgeon general is to help build a culture of prevention in America so that we are a nation that is as good at preventing illness as we are at treating it.

Right now we have millions of people in our country who are suffering in isolation, thinking that they are the only ones who are dealing with drug addiction, who don't realize that on their own block there are other people and families. They think they're alone and they think they're going to be judged and they don't want to talk about it. But when people do come forward and share their stories it's incredibly liberating, and it gives other people permission to tell their stories too.

My weakness is sweets. I like bread pudding and cheesecake in particular.