Archive

Quotes

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

—Plato, c. 375 BC

You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.

—Walter Lippmann, 1913

There are times when reality becomes too complex for oral communication. But legend gives it a form by which it pervades the whole world.

—Jean-Luc Godard, 1965

Men worry over the great number of diseases, while doctors worry over the scarcity of effective remedies.

—Bian Qiao, c. 500 BC

Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world.

—Hans Zinsser, 1935

O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

—William Shakespeare, c. 1599

Your body is the church where nature asks to be reverenced.

—Marquis de Sade, 1797

We don’t have the option of turning away from the future. No one gets to vote on whether technology is going to change our lives.

—Bill Gates, 1995

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

—Arthur C. Clarke, 1973

An ugly sight, a man who’s afraid. 

—Jean Anouilh, 1944

He who sings frightens away his ills.

—Miguel de Cervantes, 1605

If not us, who? If not now, when?

—Czech slogan, 1989

As to the sea itself, love it you cannot. Why should you? I will never believe again the sea was ever loved by anyone whose life was married to it. It is the creation of omnipotence, which is not of humankind and understandable, and so the springs of its behavior are hidden.

—H.M. Tomlinson, 1912