TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Genius is two percent inspiration, ninety-eight percent perspiration.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index B > Christiaan Barnard Quotes

Thumbnail of Christiaan Barnard (source)
Christiaan Barnard
(8 Nov 1922 - 2 Sep 2001)

South African surgeon who performed the world’s first human heart transplant operation on Louis Washkansky, in a five-hour operation on 3 Dec 1967.


Science Quotes by Christiaan Barnard (10 quotes)

Any man who says he doesn’t like applause and recognition is either a fool or a liar. You learn from mistakes, but success gives you the courage to go on and do even more.
— Christiaan Barnard
As quoted in Lawrence K. Altman, 'Christiaan Barnard, 78, Surgeon For First Heart Transplant, Dies', New York Times (3 Sep 2001)
Science quotes on:  |  Applause (9)  |  Courage (82)  |  Do (1905)  |  Fool (121)  |  Learn (672)  |  Liar (8)  |  Man (2252)  |  Mistake (180)  |  More (2558)  |  Recognition (93)  |  Say (989)  |  Success (327)

Christ, it’s going to work!
— Christiaan Barnard
Exclaimed at end of the first heart transplant operation, when an electric shock was applied to the first transplanted heart, and it jumped and started beating swiftly. As quoted in Melissa August, et al., '34 Years Ago in Time', Time (15 Dec 1967).
Science quotes on:  |  Christ (17)  |  Heart Transplant (6)  |  Success (327)  |  Surgery (54)  |  Work (1402)

For a dying man it is not a difficult decision [to agree to become the world's first heart transplant] … because he knows he is at the end. If a lion chases you to the bank of a river filled with crocodiles, you will leap into the water convinced you have a chance to swim to the other side. But you would not accept such odds if there were no lion.
— Christiaan Barnard
In Janie B. Butts and Karen Rich, Nursing Ethics (2005), 59.
Science quotes on:  |  Accept (198)  |  Bank (31)  |  Become (821)  |  Chance (244)  |  Chase (14)  |  Crocodile (14)  |  Decision (98)  |  Difficult (263)  |  End (603)  |  First (1302)  |  Heart (243)  |  Heart Transplant (6)  |  Know (1538)  |  Leap (57)  |  Lion (23)  |  Man (2252)  |  Other (2233)  |  Risk (68)  |  River (140)  |  Side (236)  |  Swim (32)  |  Transplant (12)  |  Water (503)  |  Will (2350)  |  World (1850)

I don’t believe medical discoveries are doing much to advance human life. As fast as we create ways to extend it we are inventing ways to shorten it.
— Christiaan Barnard
What They Said (1970), 374.
Science quotes on:  |  Advance (298)  |  Create (245)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Doing (277)  |  Extend (129)  |  Human (1512)  |  Life (1870)  |  Medicine (392)  |  Way (1214)

If the poor overweight jogger only knew how far he had to run to work off the calories in a crust of bread he might find it better in terms of pound per mile to go to a massage parlor.
— Christiaan Barnard
In M. P. Singh, Quote Unquote: A Handbook of Quotations (2007), 131.
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Bread (42)  |  Crust (43)  |  Diet (56)  |  Exercise (113)  |  Find (1014)  |  Poor (139)  |  Run (158)  |  Term (357)  |  Terms (184)  |  Work (1402)

It is infinitely better to transplant a heart than to bury it to be devoured by worms.
— Christiaan Barnard
In 'People', Time (31 Oct 1969).
Science quotes on:  |  Better (493)  |  Bury (19)  |  Devour (29)  |  Heart (243)  |  Heart Transplant (6)  |  Transplant (12)  |  Worm (47)

On Saturday, I was a surgeon in South Africa, very little known ... [and] ... On Monday, I was world renowned.
— Christiaan Barnard
In Janie B. Butts and Karen Rich, Nursing Ethics (2005), 59.
Science quotes on:  |  Africa (38)  |  Biography (254)  |  Fame (51)  |  Known (453)  |  Little (717)  |  Saturday (11)  |  South (39)  |  Surgeon (64)  |  World (1850)

Suffering isn’t ennobling, recovery is.
— Christiaan Barnard
Quoted in Patricia T. O’Conner, 'Recovery Is Ennobling, Suffering Is Not', New York Times (28 Apr 1985), BR9.
Science quotes on:  |  Recovery (24)  |  Suffering (68)

The heart transplant wasn’t such a big thing surgically. The point is I was prepared to take the risk. My philosophy is that the biggest risk in life is not to take the risk.
— Christiaan Barnard
In conversation with Time magazine. As quoted in 'Christiaan Barnard', Encyclopedia of World Biography.
Science quotes on:  |  Heart (243)  |  Heart Transplant (6)  |  Life (1870)  |  Philosophy (409)  |  Point (584)  |  Risk (68)  |  Surgery (54)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Transplant (12)

The prime goal is to alleviate suffering, and not to prolong life. And if your treatment does not alleviate suffering, but only prolongs life, that treatment should be stopped.
— Christiaan Barnard
Attributed. Seen as an end-of-page space filler, 'Reflections', after article, Michael J. MacFarlane, 'Sir William Osier: A Brief Review', Journal of General Internal medicine (Nov 1993), 8, 625.
Science quotes on:  |  Goal (155)  |  Life (1870)  |  Prolong (29)  |  Suffering (68)  |  Treatment (135)


See also:
  • 8 Nov - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Barnard's birth.
  • One Life, by Christiaan Barnard and Curtis Bill Pepper. - book suggestion.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.