I have a reverence for medicine because I hero-worshiped my father [a former doctor], and because I admire doctors, I admire study, empiricism and rational thought. I don't study, empiricize or think rationally myself - but I admire it in others.
Interpretation
The quote expresses admiration for the field of medicine and the qualities that characterize effective practitioners, such as empirical study and rational thinking.
Hugh Laurie reflects on his deep respect for medicine, as it highlights the values of empirical evidence and rational thought, qualities embodied by his father and the medical professionals he admires. While Laurie acknowledges his own lack of these skills, he finds inspiration and reverence in those who embrace them, illustrating a complex relationship between personal limitations and the admiration of professional expertise.
In practice
This quote can be shared at a medical conference to inspire young doctors to appreciate their profession.
L.A. runs on optimism, enthusiasm and flattery. I think you can go a little bit crazy. I've heard people say there's a limit to the number of years you can stay in this city without going slightly mad. It's just too damn sunny in every dimension - weather-wise, socially and professionally.
Acting is largely about putting on masks, and music is about removing them.
I know a lot of people think therapy is about sitting around staring at your own navel - but it's staring at your own navel with a goal. And the goal is to one day to see the world in a better way and treat your loved ones with more kindness and have more to give.
As a real person, he wouldn't last a minute, would he? But drama is about imperfection. And we've moved away from the aspirational hero. We got tired of it, it was dull. If I was House's friend, I would hate it. How he so resolutely refuses to be happy or take the kind-hearted road. But we don't always like morally good people, do we?
To tell you the truth, the older I get, the less I know. I keep meeting people, both older and younger, who seem to have accrued so much more knowledge or expertise or certainty about who they are and the jobs they do. I just marvel at it.
I think good-looking people seldom make good television. And American television studios almost concede before they start: 'Well, it won't be good, but at least it'll be good-looking. We'll have nice-looking girls in tight shirts with F.B.I. badges and fit-looking guys with lots of hair gel vaulting over things.'
The great mathematician fully, almost ruthlessly, exploits the domain of permissible reasoning and skirts the impermissible. That his recklessness does not lead him into a morass of contradictions is a miracle in itself: certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin's process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.
There is always the danger in scientific work that some word or phrase will be used by different authors to express so many ideas and surmises that, unless redefined, it loses all real significance.
Nearly all men die of their medicines, not of their diseases.
I like to think that Einstein would look at string theory’s journey and smile, enjoying the theory’s remarkable geometrical features while feeling kinship with fellow travelers on the long and winding road toward unification.
Who would not have been laughed at if he had said in 1800 that metals could be extracted from their ores by electricity or that portraits could be drawn by chemistry.
I won't compare ants and people, but ants give us a useful model of how single members of a community can become so organized that they end up resembling, in effect, one big collective brain. Our own exploding population and communication technology are leading us that way.
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