Joseph Murray quotes

Joseph Murray was an American surgeon and scientist renowned for performing the world’s first successful human kidney transplant. His groundbreaking work significantly advanced the fields of organ transplantation and immunology. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his pioneering contributions. Here are 19 of his quotes:

I was performing skin grafts and became interested in why skin wouldn't graft permanently.

Joseph Murray

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

Joseph Murray

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

Joseph Murray

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.

Joseph Murray

You cannot stop the human mind from working.

Joseph Murray

Is the Church inimical to science? Growing up as a Catholic and a scientist - I don't see it. One truth is revealed truth, the other is scientific truth. If you really believe that creation is good, there can be no harm in studying science. The more we learn about creation - the way it emerged - it just adds to the glory of God. Personally, I've never seen a conflict.

Joseph Murray

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

Joseph Murray

Kidney transplants seem so routine now. But the first one was like Lindbergh's flight across the ocean.

Joseph Murray

The slow rejection of the foreign skin grafts fascinated me. How could the host distinguish another person's skin from his own?

Joseph Murray

Stem cells are probably going to be extremely useful.

Joseph Murray

To the patient, any operation is momentous.

Joseph Murray

One of my surgical giant friends had in his operating room a sign "If the operation is difficult, you aren't doing it right." What he meant was, you have to plan every operation You cannot ever be casual You have to realize that any operation is a potential fatality.

Joseph Murray

Animal experimentation has been essential to the development of all cardiac surgery, transplantation surgery, joint replacements and all vaccinations.

Joseph Murray

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

Joseph Murray

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.'

Joseph Murray

At heart, I'm a reconstructive surgeon.

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.

Joseph Murray