Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world.
—Hans Zinsser, 1935
Archive
Quotes
We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf.
—Epicurus, c. 300 BCWhat, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.
—Frederick Douglass, 1855The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.
—Joseph Conrad, 1899All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full.
—Book of Ecclesiastes, c. 250 BCCasting lots causes contentions to cease, and keeps the mighty apart.
—Book of Proverbs, c. 350 BCWe are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things, and once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840There is a sickness among tyrants: they cannot trust their friends.
—Aeschylus, c. 458 BCIn my dreams I sleep with everybody.
—Anaïs Nin, 1933If you find excrement somewhere in the village, the chief was the one who put it there.
—Congolese proverbEvery man takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.
—Arthur Schopenhauer, 1851In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: they must be fit for it; they must not do too much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it.
—John Ruskin, 1850