For years, Dr. House imparted wisdom not only to those in his office, but also to us, the audience, watching him be a snarky, grumpy old man. He’s a smart guy, so there’s no reason to doubt that some profound stuff came out of his mouth every so often. Though the intelligence is usually mixed with biting sarcasm and disdain. I’ve tried to assemble what I think are twenty of his best quotes from the show over the years. This list could have been a hundred instead, but we’ll just start with these first:
1. “You want to know how two chemicals interact, do you ask them? No, they’re going to lie through their lying little chemical teeth. Throw them in a beaker and apply heat.”
2. “Everybody does stupid things, it shouldn’t cost them everything they want in life.”
3. “I choose to believe that the white light people sometimes see… they’re all just chemical reactions that take place when the brain shuts down…. There’s no conclusive science. My choice has no practical relevance to my life, I choose the outcome I find more comforting…. I find it more comforting to believe that this isn’t simply a test.”
4. “Our bodies break down, sometimes when we’re 90, sometimes before we’re even born, but it always happens and there’s never any dignity in it. I don’t care if you can walk, see, wipe your own ass. It’s always ugly. Always. You can live with dignity, we can’t die with it.”
5. “Occam’s Razor. The simplest explanation is almost always somebody screwed up.”
6. “I take risks, sometimes patients die. But not taking risks causes more patients to die, so I guess my biggest problem is I’ve been cursed with the ability to do the math.”
7. “And humility is an important quality. Especially if you’re wrong a lot…. Of course, when you’re right, self-doubt doesn’t help anybody, does it?”
8. “Welcome to the world. Everyone’s different, everyone gets treated different. You try fighting that, you end up dying of TB.”
9. “Right and wrong do exist. Just because you don’t know what the right answer is – maybe there’s even no way you could know what the right answer is – doesn’t make your answer right or even okay. It’s much simpler than that. It’s just plain wrong.”
10. “You know what’s worse than useless? Useless and oblivious.”
11. “You want to make things right? Too bad. Nothing’s ever right.”
12. “What usually happens when you poke something with a stick? It pokes back.”
13. “Dying people lie too. Wish they’d worked less, been nicer, opened orphanages for kittens. If you really want to do something, you do it. You don’t save it for a sound bite.”
14. “If you talk to God you’re religious. If God talks to you, you’re psychotic.”
15. “A psychic once told me that I’m psychic.”
16. “Arrogance has to be earned.”
17. “There is not a thin line between love and hate. There is — in fact — a Great Wall of China with armed sentries posted every 20 feet between love and hate.”
18, “Tell a surgeon it’s okay to cut a leg off and he’s going to spend the night polishing his good hacksaw…. they care about their patients. They just care about themselves more. Which is not an unreasonable position. Trying to maximize the tissue you save also maximizes the chances of something going wrong. Which means you’ve gotta be extra careful. Which is such a pain in the ass.”
19. “Idiopathic, from the Latin meaning we’re idiots cause we can’t figure out what’s causing it.”
20. “Never trust doctors.”
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