Quotes about diseases
A collection of quotes on the topic of disease.
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„The male is a biological accident: the y(male) gene is an incomplete x(female) gene, that is, has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion…. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.“
— Valerie Solanas American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol. 1936 - 1988
Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. [1] ("y(male)" & "x(female)" spaceless in original).
„Welcome baby,
It's your turn to live,
They lie in wait for you, chicken pox, whooping cough, smallpox,
Malaria, TB, heart disease, cancer, and so on.
Unemployment, hunger, and so on.
Train wrecks, bus accidents, plane crashes, work accidents,
Earthquakes, floods, droughts, and so on.
Heartbreak, alcoholism, and so on.
Nightsticks, prison doors, and so on.
They lie in wait for you, the atom bomb, and so on.
Welcome baby,
It's your turn to live.
They lie in wait for you, socialism, communism, and so on.“
— Nâzım Hikmet Turkish poet 1902 - 1963
From Welcome (10 September 1961)
„Life is a terminal disease, and it is sexually transmitted.“
— John Cleese actor from England 1939
Source: Life and How to Survive It
„"The first time you saw me, I bet you didn't think, He's going to get me killed."
"The first time I saw you, I wished you'd go back to Idris. You know I don't like change."
"I grew on you, though."
"Eventually. Like a moss, or a skin disease."“
— Cassandra Clare, The Mortal Instruments
Jace Herondale and Alec Lightwood, pg. 437-438
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)
„We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.“
— Octavia E. Butler, book Parable of the Talents
Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 20 (p. 392)
„Following the enormous conjecture in the press over the last two weeks, I wish to confirm that I have been tested HIV positive and have AIDS. I felt it correct to keep this information private to date to protect the privacy of those around me. However, the time has come now for my friends and fans around the world to know the truth and I hope that everyone will join with my doctors and all those worldwide in the fight against this terrible disease. My privacy has always been very special to me and I am famous for my lack of interviews. Please understand this policy will continue.“
— Freddie Mercury British singer, songwriter and record producer 1946 - 1991
Statement to the press (23 November 1991), the day before his death, as quoted at The Biography Channel http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biography_story/338:294/1/Freddie_Mercury.htm.
„Bolshevism is a disease which is peculiar to Russia. It will never grow deep roots in any countries which are not entirely Russian.“
— Józef Piłsudski Polish politician and Prime Minister 1867 - 1935
Aleksandra Piłsudski, Memoirs of Madame Piłsudski, 1940
Attributed
„An osteopath is only a human engineer, who should understand all the laws governing his engine and thereby master disease.“
— Andrew Taylor Still Founder of Osteopathic Medicine 1828 - 1917
Autobiography of A.T. Still, page 253.
„I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.”“
— John Green, book The Fault in Our Stars
A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)
„Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.“
— Ambrose Bierce American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist 1842 - 1914
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
„Hard work never killed a man. Men die of boredom, psychological conflict, and disease. They do not die of hard work.“
— David Ogilvy Advertising executive 1911 - 1999
„I am unwilling to accord to some small−minded and jealous individuals the satisfaction of having thwarted my efforts. These men are to me nothing more than microbes of a nasty disease. My project was retarded by laws of nature. The world was not prepared for it.“
— Nikola Tesla Serbian American inventor 1856 - 1943
About the role of J. Pierpont Morgan, and the failure of Tesla's "World System" project
My Inventions (1919)
Context: He had the highest regard for my attainments and gave me every evidence of his complete faith in my ability to ultimately achieve what I had set out to do. I am unwilling to accord to some small−minded and jealous individuals the satisfaction of having thwarted my efforts. These men are to me nothing more than microbes of a nasty disease. My project was retarded by laws of nature. The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of time, but the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success.
„People want to find a 'meaning' in everything and everyone. That's the disease of our age, an age that is anything but practical but believes itself to be more practical than any other age.“
— Pablo Picasso Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer 1881 - 1973
Quoted in: Ingo F. Walther (1996), Picasso, p. 67.
Attributed from posthumous publications
„… humanity is a disease, a cancer on the body of the world.“
— Scott Westerfeld, book Pretties
Variant: humanity is a cancer on the body of the world
Source: Pretties
„Upon the earth are animals and men, some in a middle region, others dwelling about the air as we dwell about the sea; others in islands which the air flows round, near the continent; and in a word, the air is used by them as the water and the sea are by us, and the ether is to them as the air is to us. Moreover, the temperament of their seasons is such that they have no disease, and live much longer than we do, and have sight and hearing and smell, and all the other senses, in far greater perfection, in the same degree that air is purer than water or the ether than air. Also they have temples and sacred places in which the gods really dwell, and they hear their voices and receive their answers and are conscious of them and hold converse with them, and they see the sun, moon, and stars as they really are, and their other blessedness is of a piece with this.“
— Socrates classical Greek Athenian philosopher -470 - -399 BC
Plato, Phaedo
„According to the pronouncements of our state rulers and their intellectual bodyguards (of whom there are more than ever before), we are better protected and more secure than ever. We are supposedly protected from global warming and cooling, from the extinction of animals and plants, from the abuses of husbands and wives, parents and employers, from poverty, disease, disaster, ignorance, prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and countless other public enemies and dangers. In fact, however, matters are strikingly different. In order to provide us with all this protection, the state managers expropriate more than 40 percent of the incomes of private producers year in and year out. Government debt and liabilities have increased without interruption, thus increasing the need for future expropriations. Owing to the substitution of government paper money for gold, financial insecurity has increased sharply, and we are continually robbed through currency depreciation. Every detail of private life, property, trade, and contract is regulated by ever higher mountains of laws legislation), thereby creating permanent legal uncertainty and moral hazard. In particular, we have been gradually stripped of the right to exclusion implied in the very concept of private property. … In short, the more the state has increased its expenditures on social security and public safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth.“
— Hans-Hermann Hoppe Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher 1949
"The Private Production of Defense" http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/Hoppe.pdf (15 June 1999)
„God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. Even so, God cannot save them from fools.“
— John Muir Scottish-born American naturalist and author 1838 - 1914
Variant: God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fool
Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 10: The American Forests <!-- Terry Gifford, EWDB, pages 604-605 -->
Context: Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed — chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. … It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods — trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries … God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle Sam can do that.
„… to put an end to the epidemics, we were forced to burn the bodies of an incalculable number of people who were destroyed by the disease. So we were forced to build crematoria, and on this account they are loosing a bond for us. "He also stated that he punished the culprit if the atrocities occurred in the camps." On the Einsatzgruppen: "The war on the Eastern front made the demands more difficult for our soldiers. A terrible climate, never-ending distances, an enemy population and constantly apparent partisans. Just because it was difficult, the troops prevailed. So they were forced to destroy entire villages if there was resistance and gunfire from such a village. Russians are not ordinary enemies, we can not understand their mentality. In the most desperate situations, they would refuse to capitulate. If, because of these difficulties in the East, the Jewish people suffered large casualties, it must be remembered that the German people also suffered severely."“
— Heinrich Himmler Nazi officer, Commander of the SS 1900 - 1945
April 20, 1945 in a meeting with Norbert Masur, a representative of the World Jewish Congress.