I have a message to give to the world, and I shall not be thwarted.

Memories do not always behave in an orderly way, but bloom, as it were, erratically.

'O sleep, O gentle sleep,' I thought gratefully, 'Nature's soft nurse!'

It is easier to recount grievances and slights than it is to set down a broad redress of such grievances and slights. The reason is that one fears to be thought of as an arrant braggart.

I came to America to teach my method -- not to enter a research experiment.

I was wholly unprepared for the extraordinary attitude of the medical world in its readiness to condemn anything that smacked of reform or that ran contrary to approved methods of practice.

At first, I was called a quack, a charlatan, and worse, year after year, in Australia, England and the United States, by men who simply refused to believe that a nurse from 'the bush' could devise a treatment which succeeded where they had failed.

I spent more time on dark ships in danger zones than any other woman in the world.

He who angers you conquers you.

The American doctor possesses a combination of conservatism and... an eagerness to know what it is really all about, in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.

I'd like to live every moment of my life, but not a moment after.

As a girl my temper often got out of bounds. But one day when I became angry at a friend over some trivial matter, my mother said to me, Elizabeth, anyone who angers you conquers you.

The American doctor, in my opinion, possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science -- that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.

I do not want medical men to discuss whether or not my work is valuable, because I know what it will do. I want them to tell me how best this new knowledge of rapidly restoring paralysed people to health and strength can be applied where it is needed.

Panic plays no part in the training of a nurse.

In the history of medicine, it is not always the great scientist or the learned doctor who goes forward to discover new fields, new avenues, new ideas.

A measure of victory has been won, and honors have been bestowed in token thereof. But honours fade or are forgotten, and monuments crumble into dust. It is the battle itself that matters -- and the battle must go on.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

Fortunately, perhaps, I was completely ignorant of the orthodox theory of the disease polio-myelitis.

His response was remarkable for its irrelevance, if for nothing else.