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Best Nursing Quotes and Sayings

This collection of nursing quotes and sayings gives you a sense of this profession.

Care and duty are the first thoughts that come to mind when you think of a nurse. A nurse is much more than a health care professional. They can touch your life once and become someone you will remember for the rest of your life.

As a nurse, you are entering one of the most demanding professions in the world. But the difference you can make with your touch and care can be almost unmatched. Your patients will never forget your healing touch and caring words.

Here are some beautiful and funny nurse quotes that everyone can relate to. These nursing quotes might give you a sense of what makes this profession unique and special. Enjoy these nursing quotes.

Nursing Quotes

1.) Caring is the essence of nursing.
Jean Watson

2.) Care for one… that’s love. Care for hundreds… that’s nursing.
Unknown

3.) Every nurse was drawn to nursing because of a desire to care, to serve, or to help.
Christina Feist-Heilmeier, RN

Good quotes about nurses.

4.) Nursing is not for everyone. It takes a very strong, intelligent, and compassionate person to take on the ills of the world with passion and purpose and work to maintain the health and well-being of the planet.
Donna Wilk Cardillo

5.) The character of the nurse is as important as the knowledge she possesses.
Carolyn Jarvis

Good Quotations About Nurses

6.) Rejoice in your work; never lose sight of the nursing leader you are now and the nursing leader you will become.
Sue Fitzsimons

7.) Nursing would be a dream job if there were no doctors.
Gerhard Kocher

8.) Save one life; you’re a hero. Save 100 lives; you’re a nurse.
Unknown

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9.) Nursing is not a career; it’s a post-apocalyptic survival skill.
Unknown

10.) When I think about all the patients and their loved ones that I have worked with over the years, I know most of them don’t remember me nor I them, but I do know that I gave a little piece of myself to each of them and they to me and those threads make up the beautiful tapestry in my mind that is my career in nursing.
Donna Wilk Cardillo

11.) Nursing is not just an art; it has a heart. Nursing is not just a science; it has a conscience.
Unknown

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Nursing quotes image

Funny Nurse Quotes

12.) I avoid unhealthy-looking people at the mall for fear of having to take CPR on my day off.
Unknown

13.) Nursing: Where else can you experience the thrill of having total strangers poop in front of you like it’s your business?
Unknown

14.) A new nurse is excited to sign everything. An old nurse tries not to sign anything.
Unknown

15.) Don’t mess with me — I get paid to poke people with sharp objects.
Unknown

16.) Multiple traumas – A unit full of ventilators and patients trying to die on me all day… I’m sorry; what were you saying about your busy day with the stapler?
Unknown

17.) Nursing: Expose yourself to rare, exotic, and exciting new diseases!
Unknown

18.) Showering won’t be enough today; I must be autoclaved.
Unknown

19.) A new nurse writes notes on a pad. An old nurse writes on a napkin, at the back of their hand, or even on their forearm.
Unknown

Amusing Nursing Takes

20.) Be nice to me! I may be your nurse someday, and I’m the one who chooses your catheter size.
Unknown

21.) Do you think Mondays are bad? Try working weekends, holidays, and 12 hours a night!
Unknown

22.) Nurse: Just another word to describe a person strong enough to tolerate everything and soft enough to understand everyone.
Unknown

23.) Treat your nurses well, “I can walk as slow or as fast as I choose to retrieve that pain medication you requested.”
Unknown

Humorous Insights

24.) Remember, I’m a nurse. You’re going to have to say a lot to gross me out.
Unknown

25.) A new nurse doesn’t want the patient to fall because she doesn’t want him to get hurt. An old nurse doesn’t want the patient to fall because she hates paperwork.
Unknown

26.) You know you are a nurse when you find yourself betting on someone’s blood alcohol content.
Unknown

Read Work Inspirational Quotes.

Inspirational Nurse Quotes

27.) Nurses are there when the last breath is taken, and nurses are there when the first breath is taken. Although it is more enjoyable to celebrate the birth, it is just as important to comfort in death.
Christine Bell

28.) The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest.
William Osler

29.) We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this something, at whatever cost, must be attained.
Marie Curie

30.) The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.
William Shakespeare

31.) When a person decides to become a nurse, they make the most important decision of their lives. They choose to dedicate themselves to the care of others.
Margaret Harvey

Nursing School Quotes

32.) Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Nelson Mandela

33.) Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. The only way to do great work is to love what you do.
Steve Jobs

34.) It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
E. E. Cummings

35.) It is not how much you do but how much love you put in the doing.
Mother Teresa

36.) Nurses are the heart of healthcare.
Donna Wilk Cardillo, MA, RN, CSP

37.) Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts.
Charles Dickens

38.) Panic plays no part in the training of a nurse.
Elizabeth Kenny, Australian Nurse

39.) Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.
Chinese Proverb

40.) When you’re a nurse, you know that every day, you will touch a life, or a life will touch yours.
Unknown

41.) Being a nurse means to hold all your own tears and start drawing smiles on people’s faces.
Dana Basem

42.) Too often, we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest accomplishment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
Leo Bascaglia

43.) Not all angels have wings…some have scrubs.
Unknown

44.) Being a nurse means to hold all your own tears and start drawing smiles on people’s faces.
Dana Basem

Takes on Being a Nurse

45.) Nursing is not for the empty of heart…nor the faint of heart.
Unknown

46.) A nurse will always give us hope, an angel with a stethoscope.
Carrie Latet

47.) To do what nobody else will do, a way that nobody else can do, in spite of all we go through; that is to be a nurse.
Rawsi Williams

Heartfelt Nurse Quotes

48.) Too often, we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
Leo Buscaglia

49.) I remember once I read a book on mental illness, and there was a nurse that had gotten sick. Do you know what she died from? From worrying about the mental patients not being able to get their food. She became a mental patient.
Ornette Coleman

50.) It is not how much you do but how much love you put in the doing.
Mother Teresa

51.) The nurse is temporarily the consciousness of the unconscious, the love of life of the suicidal, the leg of the amputee, the eyes of the newly blind, a means of locomotion for the newborn, knowledge, and confidence for the young mother, a voice for those too weak to speak, and so on.
Virginia Henderson, RN

52.) Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.
Dag Hammarskjold

53.) You’re going to be there when a lot of people are born and when a lot of people die. In most every culture, such moments are regarded as sacred and private, made special by a divine presence. No one on Earth would be welcome, but you’re personally invited. What an honor that is.
Thom Dick

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Nurse Ratched Quotes

54.) If Mr. McMurphy doesn’t want to take his medication orally, I’m sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way. But I don’t think that he would like it.
Nurse Ratched

55.) Yes. This is what I know. The ward is a factory for the Combine. It’s for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods, and in the schools, and in the churches, the hospital is. When a completed product goes back out into society, all fixed up, good as new, better than new sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurse’s heart.
Chief Bromden

56.) First Charles Cheswick and now William Bibbit! I hope you’re finally satisfied. Playing with human lives – gambling with human lives – as if you thought yourself to be a God!
Nurse Ratched

57.) I thought for a minute there I saw her whipped. Maybe I did. But I see now that it don’t make any difference. To beat her, you don’t have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she’s won for good. And eventually, we all got to lose. Nobody can help that.
Chief Bromden

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Nurses Sayings

58.) Nurses dispense comfort, compassion, and caring without even a prescription.
Val Saintsbury

59.) America’s nurses are the beating heart of our medical system.
Barack Obama

60.) You look after us in our happiest and saddest times. And for many, you look after us and our families at the end of our lives. Your dedication and professionalism are awe-inspiring.
Duchess Kate Middleton

61.) Hardships often prepare people for an extraordinary destiny.
C.S. Lewis

62.) Bound by paperwork short on hands, sleep, and energy… nurses are rarely short of caring.
Sharon Hudacek

63.) You treat a disease: you win, you lose. You treat a person; I guarantee you win – no matter the outcome.
Robin Williams (Playing Dr. Hunter “Patch” Adams in the 1998 movie Patch Adams)

64.) Nurses don’t wait until October to celebrate Make a Difference Day — they make a difference daily!
Unknown

65.) When someone is going through a storm, your silent presence is more powerful than a million empty words.
Mahatma Gandhi

66.) If you wait to do everything until you’re sure it’s right, you’ll probably never do much of anything.
Win Borden

67.) The doctors may be mapping out the war games, but it is the nurses who make the conflict bearable.
Jodi Picoult

Being a Nurse

68.) Nurses are patient people.
Unknown

69.) The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest.
William Osler

70.) Nurses are a unique kind. They have this insatiable need to care for others, which is both their biggest strength and fatal flaw.
Dr. Jean Watson

71.) If love can’t cure it, nurses can.
Unknown

72.) You don’t build a house without its foundation. You don’t build a hospital without its nurses.
Unknown

Caring Nursing Quotes

73.) Nurses: one of the few blessings of being ill.
Sara Moss-Wolfe

74.) Our job as nurses is to cushion the sorrow and celebrate the joy every day while we are ‘just doing our jobs.’
Christine Belle

75.) I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy – I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.
Art Williams

76.) Nurses may not be angels, but they are the next best thing.
Unknown

77.) It would not be possible to praise nurses too highly.
Stephen Ambrose

78.) The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
Mahatma Gandhi

Florence Nightingale’s Nursing Quotes

79.) Nursing is one of the fine arts: I had almost said ‘the finest of fine arts.’

80.) Nursing is an art, and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation as any painter’s or sculptor’s work.

81.) The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.

82.) The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe.

83.) Nursing is an art, and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation as any painter’s or sculptor’s work, for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God’s spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.

84.) I attribute my success to this — I never gave or took any excuse.

Maya Angelou Nursing Quotes

85.) As a nurse, we have the opportunity to heal the heart, mind, soul, and body of our patients, their families, and ourselves. They may forget your name, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

86.) If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

87.) Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.

88.) Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better!

89.) You may encounter many defeats but must not be defeated.

90.) Whatever you want to do, if you want to be great at it, you have to love it and be able to make sacrifices for it.

91.) You may not control all the events that happen to you,
but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

92.) ‎The desire to reach the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise and most possible.

93.) Seek patience and passion in equal amounts. Patience alone will not build the temple. Passion alone will destroy its walls.

Nursing as a Service Insights

94.) Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on Earth to do with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.
Vincent Van Gogh

95.) Forgive yourself; you are not perfect. Show yourself grace; you are still learning. Show yourself patience; you are on a journey.
Unknown

96.) Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation.
Aristotle

97.) Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, and fear of surprise do a patient more harm than any exertion.
Florence Nightingale

98.) It would not be possible to praise nurses too highly.
Stephen Ambrose

99.) Nurses are a unique kind. They have this insatiable need to care for others, which is both their greatest strength and fatal flaw.
Jean Watson, American Nurse Theorist and Professor

100.) Nurses are like icebergs. At any one time, you are only seeing what they are actually doing.
Ian Miller

Short Nursing Quotes

101.) Nursing is a work of the heart.

102.) Nursing: Every day is a chance to make a difference.

103.) Caring for others, one patient at a time.

104.) Nurses are angels in comfortable shoes.

105.) Nurses – one of the few blessings of being ill.
Sara Moss-Wolfe

106.) Caregiving often calls us to lean into love we didn’t know was possible.
Tia Walker

107.) From caring comes courage.
Lao Tzu

By Mary Olson

Mary writes for Greeting Card Poet.

Extra Extra

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