Florence Nightingale Quotes (18 Quotes)


    The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

    No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this - 'devoted and obedient'. This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman

    Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.

    She said the object and color in the materials around us actually have a physical effect on us, on how we feel.

    So never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.



    Instead of wishing to see more doctors made by women joining what there are, I wish to see as few doctors, either male or female, as possible. For, mark you, the women have made no improvement they have only tried to be ''men'' and they have only succeeded in being third-rate men.

    Of Florence Nightingale Her statistics were more than a study, they were indeed her religion. For her Quetelet was the hero as scientist, and the presentation copy of his Physique sociale is annotated by her on every page. Florence Nightingale believed and in all the actions of her life acted upon that belief that the administrator could only be successful if he were guided by statistical knowledge. The legislator to say nothing of the politician too often failed for want of this knowledge. Nay, she went further she held that the universe including human communities was evolving in accordance with a divine plan that it was man's business to endeavor to understand this plan and guide his actions in sympathy with it. But to understand God's thoughts, she held we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose. Thus the study of statistics was for her a religious duty.

    I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

    The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

    I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women... no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.

    Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.



    What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior... jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.


    To understand God's thoughts, we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.

    It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.


    More Florence Nightingale Quotations (Based on Topics)


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