Quotes about diseases
page 2

“I believe that none of us are fully free when others in the human family remain shackled by poverty or disease or oppression.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Cape Town University Address (June 2013)

Family

“At puberty, the elements of an unsuperstitious sexual morality ought to be taught. Boys and girls should be taught that nothing can justify sexual intercourse unless there is mutual inclination… Boys and girls should be taught respect for each other's liberty; they should be made to feel that nothing gives one human being rights over another, and that jealousy and possessiveness kill love. They should be taught that to bring another human being into the world is a very serious matter, only to be undertaken when the child will have a reasonable prospect of health, good surroundings, and parental care. But they should also be taught methods of birth control, so as to insure that children shall only come when they are wanted. Finally, they should be taught the dangers of venereal disease, and the methods of prevention and cure. The increase of human happiness to be expected from sex education on these lines is immeasurable.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1920s, What I Believe (1925)

Love, Children, Health, World

“For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable.”

Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician

1:6; Variant translations:
Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases. Compare: "A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy", Guy Fawkes, in admitting to the Gunpowder Plot; "Diseases desperate grown / By desperate appliance are relieved, / Or not at all", William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act iv, Scene 3; "For a desperate disease a desperate cure", Michel de Montaigne, The Custom of the Isle of Cea, Chapter iii.
Aphorisms

“When she [Philosophy] saw that the Muses of poetry were present by my couch giving words to my lamenting, she was stirred a while; her eyes flashed fiercely, and said she, "Who has suffered these seducing mummers to approach this sick man? Never do they support those in sorrow by any healing remedies, but rather do ever foster the sorrow by poisonous sweets. These are they who stifle the fruit-bearing harvest of reason with the barren briars of the passions: they free not the minds of men from disease, but accustom them thereto."”
Quae ubi poeticas Musas uidit nostro assistentes toro fletibusque meis uerba dictantes, commota paulisper ac toruis inflammata luminibus: Quis, inquit, has scenicas meretriculas ad hunc aegrum permisit accedere, quae dolores eius non modo nullis remediis fouerent, uerum dulcibus insuper alerent uenenis? Hae sunt enim quae infructuosis affectuum spinis uberem fructibus rationis segetem necant hominumque mentes assuefaciunt morbo, non liberant.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480) philosopher of the early 6th century

Prose I, lines 7-9; translation by W.V. Cooper
The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book I

Men, Support, Suffering, Passion

“Now that we're 18 days before the election, Mr. Severely Conservative wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said over the last year. He told folks he was the ideal candidate for the Tea Party, now he's telling folks, "What? Who me?" He's forgetting what his own positions are. And he's betting that you will too. I mean, he's changing up so much and backtrackin' and sidesteppin'. We've gotta name this condition that he's going though. I think it's called Romnesia. That's what it's called. I think that's what he's goin' through. Now, I'm not a medical doctor, but I do wanna go over some of the symptoms with you, because I wanna make sure nobody else catches it.You know, if you say you're for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether or not you'd sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work, you might have Romnesia.If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let your employer deny you contraceptive care, you might have a case of Romnesia.If you say you'll protect a woman's right to choose, but you stand up in a primary debate and say that you'd be delighted to sign a law outlying — outlawing that right to choose in all cases — man, you definitely got Romnesia.Now, this extends to other issues. If you say earlier in the year, "I'm gonna give a tax cut to the top 1%", and in a debate you say, "I don't know anything about giving tax cuts to rich folks", you need to get a thermometer, take your temperature, because you've probably got Romnesia.If you say that you're a champion of the coal industry when, while you were governor, you stood in front of a coal plant and said "This plant will kill you" —[audience: Romnesia! ] that's some Romnesia.And if you come down with a case of Romnesia and you can't seem to remember the policies that are still on your website, or the promises you've made over the six years you've been running for President, here's the good news: Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions. We can fix you up.. We've got a cure. We can make you well, Virginia. This is a curable disease.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Campaign rally http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/10/19/remarks-president-campaign-event-fairfax-va, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, 2012

Women, Law, Support, Thinking

“Dearest,
I want to tell you that you have given me complete happiness. No one could have done more than you have done. Please believe that.
But I know that I shall never get over this: and I am wasting your life. It is this madness. Nothing anyone says can persuade me. You can work, and you will be much better without me. You see I can't write this even, which shows I am right. All I want to say is that until this disease came on we were perfectly happy. It was all due to you. No one could have been so good as you have been, from the very first day till now. Everyone knows that.
V.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Letter to Leonard Woolf (28 March 1941), from The Virginia Woolf Reader (1984) edited by Mitchell A. Leaska, p. 369, ISBN 0156935902

Life, Madness, Happiness

“… 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 (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

April 20, 1945 in a meeting with Norbert Masur, a representative of the World Jewish Congress.

War, People, Understanding, Suffering

“The best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration.
Many warnings have been uttered by eminent men of science and by authorities in military strategy. None of them will say that the worst results are certain. What they do say is that these results are possible, and no one can be sure that they will not be realized. We have not yet found that the views of experts on this question depend in any degree upon their politics or prejudices. They depend only, so far as our researches have revealed, upon the extent of the particular expert's knowledge. We have found that the men who know most are the most gloomy.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1950s, The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (1955)

Death, Men, War, Fear

“I regard [religion] as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1930s, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? (1930)

Fear, Religion

“Prejudice is a disease. So is fashion. But I will not wear prejudice.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Lady Gaga on her Twitter http://twitter.com/ladygaga/status/15736252756

Fashion

“Take notice, Pheidias, that you are human yourself, and that the wretched man is also human, in order that you may not covet what's beyond you. But when you say that you suffer from insomnia, you'll know the cause if you'll examine yourself what man you are. You take a stroll in the market-place; you come in forthwith; if your two legs are tired you take a luxurious bath; you rise up and eat greedily at pleasure; your life itself is a sleep. In fine, you have no ill; your disease is luxury through which you have passed — but something rather hackneyed, my young master, occurs to me — please excuse me — as the saying goes, you know, you are so crowded by your blessings, know it well, that you have no room to defecate.”

Menander (-342–-291 BC) Athenian playwright of New Comedy

The Ghost, 31-43.

Life, Pleasure, Sleep, Suffering

“I am not superstitious, but the first time I saw this medal, bearing the venerated likeness of John Calvin, I kissed it, imagining that no one saw the action. I was very greatly surprised when I received this magnificent present, which shall be passed round for your inspection. On the one side is John Calvin with his visage worn by disease and deep thought, and on the other side is a verse fully applicable to him: ‘He endured, as seeing Him who is invisible.’
This sentence truly describes the character of that glorious man of God. Among all those who have been born of women, there has not risen a greater than John Calvin; no age, before him ever produced his equal, and no age afterwards has seen his rival. In theology, he stands alone, shining like a bright fixed star, while other leaders and teachers can only circle round him, at a great distance — as comets go streaming through space — with nothing like his glory or his permanence.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

The Autobiography of Charles H. Spurgeon, Compiled from His Diaries, Letters, and Records by His Wife and His Private Secretary, 1899, Fleming H. Revell, Vol. 2, (1854-1860), pp. 371-372. http://books.google.com/books?id=t3RAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA371&dq=%22I+saw+this+medal,+bearing+the+venerated+likeness+of+John+Calvin,+I+kissed+it%22&hl=en&ei=JP4LTd-SMcX_lgf0--yzDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22I%20saw%20this%20medal%2C%20bearing%20the%20venerated%20likeness%20of%20John%20Calvin%2C%20I%20kissed%20it%22&f=false

Women, God, Age, Imagination

“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), Ch. 13.

Death, Winter, Loyalty, Clothes

“[On cancer] One of the problems is that the notion of cancer has been so normalized. You hear about it so often, and it's not ok… it's not ok to normalize this disease. And with all of the pinkwashing that goes on —where companies are selling products based on breast cancer month — it's a lovely gesture, but consumers get so used to it that it becomes more normal.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview at Susan G. Komen for the Cure (October 2011) http://www.kstreetkate.net/2011/10/jennifer-beals-honors-promise-talks.html

Love, Problem

“Beneath our feet and o'er our head
Is equal warning given:
Beneath us lie the countless dead,
Above us is the heaven! Death rides on every passing breeze,
And lurks in every flower;
Each season has its own disease,
Its peril every hour.”

Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman

"At a Funeral", No. I.
need further publication dates

Death, Lie, Flowers, Dead

“The metals are all essentially identical; they differ only in form. Now, the form brings out accidental causes, which the experimenter must try to discover and remove, as far as possible. Accidental causes impede the regular union of sulphur and mercury; for every metal is a combination of sulphur and mercury. A diseased womb may give birth to a weakly, leprous child, although the seed was good; the same is true of the metals which are generated in the bowels of the earth, which is a womb for them; any cause whatever, or local trouble, may produce an imperfect metal. When pure sulphur comes in contact with pure mercury, after more or less time, and by the permanent action of nature, gold is produced.”

Albertus Magnus (1206–1280) Dominican friar

As quoted by Francis Preston Venable, A Short History of Chemistry (1894) p. 28. https://books.google.com/books?id=fN9YAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA28

Birth, Nature, Time

“The family unit is the institution for the systematic production of mental illness.”

Ashley Montagu (1905–1999) British-American anthropologist

Interview on "The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson" promoting the latest edition of his book The Natural Superiority of Women (orig. 1952) Quoted in David Berg, Run, Brother, Run http://books.google.gr/books?id=FWwXuRNRup8C&dq=, Simon and Schuster, 2013, p. 242.

Family

“On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

Life, World, Hope, Way

“This is how I recognize an authentic poet: by frequenting him, living a long time in the intimacy of his work, something changes in myself, not so much my inclinations or my tastes as my very blood, as if a subtle disease had been injected to alter its course, its density and nature. To live around a true poet is to feel your blood run thin, to dream a paradise of anemia, and to hear, in your veins, the rustle of tears.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Dreams, Feeling, Nature, Tear

“And this is a disease of the mind, the way I see it. Because in actual fact, men and women have much more in common than they are separated.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

Salon interview (1997)
Context: I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common. If you see it, black and white people, both sides look to see the differences, they don't look at what they have together. Men and women, and old and young, and so on. And this is a disease of the mind, the way I see it. Because in actual fact, men and women have much more in common than they are separated.

Women, Men, Way

“To be or not to be is not the question. The vital question is: how to be and how not to be?
The tendency to forget this vital question is the tragic disease of contemporary man, a disease that may prove fatal, that may end in disaster.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"No Religion is an Island", p. 264
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. And yet being alive is no answer to the problems of living. To be or not to be is not the question. The vital question is: how to be and how not to be?
The tendency to forget this vital question is the tragic disease of contemporary man, a disease that may prove fatal, that may end in disaster. To pray is to recollect passionately the perpetual urgency of this vital question.

Question, Forgetting

“Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.”

William Beveridge Beveridge Report

Pt. 1, 8
Social Insurance and Allied Services (1942)
Context: Organisation of social insurance should be treated as one part only of a comprehensive policy of social progress. Social insurance fully developed may provide income security; it is an attack upon Want. But Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

Way

“The nearer any disease approaches to a crisis, the nearer it is to a cure. Danger and deliverance make their advances together, and it is only the last push, in which one or the other takes the lead.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

The Crisis No. IV.
1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)
Context: There is a mystery in the countenance of some causes, which we have not always present judgment enough to explain. It is distressing to see an enemy advancing into a country, but it is the only place in which we can beat them, and in which we have always beaten them, whenever they made the attempt. The nearer any disease approaches to a crisis, the nearer it is to a cure. Danger and deliverance make their advances together, and it is only the last push, in which one or the other takes the lead.

“Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 50
Context: My first advice (on how not to grow old) would be to choose you ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the flower of his youth, at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off.

Age

“Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

This attribution to Voltaire appears in Strauss' Familiar Medical Quotations (1968), p. 394, and in publications as early as 1956 http://books.google.pt/books?id=lCtCAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Doctors+are+men+who+prescribe+medicine+of%22&dq=%22Doctors+are+men+who+prescribe+medicine+of%22&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=mbnWUsvDIfTB7Aaw_YD4Dw&redir_esc=y; the quotation in French does not, however, appear to be original, and is probably a relatively modern invention, only quoted in recent (21st century) published works, which attribute it to "Voltaire" without citing any source. Original: (fr) Les médecins administrent des médicaments dont ils savent très peu, à des malades dont ils savent moins, pour guérir des maladies dont ils ne savent rien.

Men

“To all these insanities will be added the most shameful—the intensified competition between male and female. We insist upon equal and full rights for women, but the servants of darkness will expel them from many fields of activity, even where they bring the most benefit. We have spoken about the many maladies in the world, but the renewed struggle between the male and female principles will be the most tragic. It is hard to imagine how disastrous this will be, for it is a struggle against evolution itself! What a high price humanity pays for every such opposition to evolution! In these convulsions the young generations are corrupted. Plato spoke about beautiful thinking, but what kind of beauty is possible when there is hostility between man and woman? Now is the time to think about equal and full rights, but darkness invades the tensed realms. However, all the dark attacks will serve a certain good purpose, for those who have been humiliated in Kali Yuga will be glorified in Satya Yuga. ...Let us remember that these years of Armageddon are the most intense, and one’s health should be especially guarded because the cosmic currents will increase many diseases. You must understand that this time is unique... It is near-sighted to think that if war is prevented all problems will be solved! There are those who think so and imagine that they can cheat evolution, not realizing that the worst war is in their own homes. However, there do exist places on Earth where evolution develops normally, and We are always there.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

286
Armageddon

Home, Time, Imagination, Hostility

“Change happens. Hope happens. Not perfection. Not every bit of cruelty and sadness and poverty and disease suddenly stricken from the earth. There will still be problems. But with each new candidate that surprises you with a victory that you supported, a spark of hope happens.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2018, Speech at the University of Illinoise Speech (2018)

Change, Support, Victory, Hope

“Yet of old the matter seemed even to be a law, and a certain law-giver among them bade the domestic slaves neither to use ointments when dry (i. e. except in bathing) nor to keep youths, giving the free this place of honor, or rather of shamefulness. Yet they, however, did not think the thing shameful, but as being a grand privilege, and one too great for slaves, the Athenian people, the wisest of people, and Solon who is so great among them, permitted it to the free alone. And sundry other books of the philosophers may one see full of this disease. But we do not therefore say that the thing was made lawful, but that they who received this law were pitiable, and objects for many tears. For these are treated in the same way as women that play the whore. Or rather their plight is more miserable. For in the case of the one the intercourse, even if lawless, is yet according to nature: but this is contrary both to law and nature. For even if there were no hell, and no punishment had been threatened, this were worse than any punishment. Yet if you say they found pleasure in it, you tell me what adds to the vengeance. For suppose I were to see a person running naked, with his body all besmeared with mire, and yet not covering himself, but exulting in it, I should not rejoice with him, but should rather bewail that he did not even perceive that he was doing shamefully.”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Hell, Law, Whore, Personality

“For every person who perishes from the effects of a stimulant, at least a thousand die from the consequences of drinking impure water. This precious fluid, which daily infuses new life into us, is likewise the chief vehicle through which disease and death enter our bodies. The germs of destruction it conveys are enemies all the more terrible as they perform their fatal work unperceived. They seal our doom while we live and enjoy. The majority of people are so ignorant or careless in drinking water, and the consequences of this are so disastrous, that a philanthropist can scarcely use his efforts better than by endeavoring to enlighten those who are thus injuring themselves. By systematic purification and sterilization of the drinking water the human mass would be very considerably increased. It should be made a rigid rule which might be enforced by law to boil or to sterilize otherwise the drinking water in every household and public place. The mere filtering does not afford sufficient security against infection. All ice for internal uses should be artificially prepared from water thoroughly sterilized. The importance of eliminating germs of disease from the city water is generally recognized, but little is being done to improve the existing conditions, as no satisfactory method of sterilizing great quantities of water has yet been brought forward. By improved electrical appliances we are now enabled to produce ozone cheaply and in large amounts, and this ideal disinfectant seems to offer a happy solution of the important question.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900)

Drink, Law, Question, Personality

“I do not wish to be a king; I am not anxious to be rich; I decline military command; I detest fornication; I am not impelled by an insatiable love of gain to go to sea; I do not contend for chaplets; I am free from a mad thirst for fame; I despise death; I am superior to every kind of disease; grief does not consume my soul.”

Tatian (120–180) Syrian writer

Original: (la) Regnare nolo: ditescere non libet: prae turam recuso, scortationem odi: navigare ob insatiabilem avaritiam non cupio: de coronis consequendis non dimico: liber sum ab insana gloria cupiditate: mortem contemno: guovis morbi genere superior sum: maror animum non peredit.
Source: Address to the Greeks, Chapter XI, as translated by J. E. Ryland

Soul, Love, Making love, Madness

“The stress which exists in the world today is a result of competition and fear, the fear of failure, disease, death, war, calamity, and economic disruption. The pressure that these fears put on humanity inevitably results in psychosomatic diseases. The cure lies in a re-establishing of equilibrium. When we establish equilibrium in our lives through a restructuring of our political, economic and social institutions, we will find that the health of humanity will improve dramatically. We will not have to spend enormous sums of money maintaining health. In fact, illness prevention will become the norm. Disease can generally be prevented more easily than it can be cured.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Mission Vol. III (1997)

Money, War, Health, World

“Whether it will be contained or not, this outbreak is rapidly becoming the first true pandemic challenge that fits the disease X category.”

Marion Koopmans (1956) Dutch university teacher

On the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, as quoted in Coronavirus May Be ‘Disease X’ Health Experts Warned About https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-22/coronavirus-may-be-the-disease-x-health-agency-warned-about (February 21, 2020) by Jason Gale, Bloomberg News

“We've all got the disease - the disease of being finite. Death is the basis of all horror.”

David Cronenberg (1943) Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor

on mortality

Death

“Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set you inherited. So you see and judge the present through the eyes of the past and get a totally distorted view of it. It is not uncommon for the voice to be a person's own worst enemy. Many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness, as well as of disease.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997)

History, Past, Personality, People

“What threatens democracy is hunger, it is misery, it is the disease of those who have no resources to face it. These are the evils that can threaten democracy, but never the people in the public square in the use of their legitimate and democratic rights.”

João Goulart (1918–1976) 24th President of Brazil

Source: João Goulart: Uma Biografia. Jorge Ferreira. 2011. Page 411. ISBN 978-85-200-1056-3

Democracy, Hunger, People, Evil

“for like 8 months i thought covid was one of those joke diseases where you ask "what's covid" and the other guy tells tou to suck his nuts”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/1350738078453755909] Tweets by year, 2021

Guy

“Saying that something is too terrible to joke about is like saying that a disease is too terrible to try to cure it.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Charlie Rose interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-LCdcdShdY, 2016

“If there is a cure to any disease, then why not a formula to become a genius?”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“You can’t keep messing me around like this. It’s been going on too long. I can’t take it anymore. I get sick every time you come around. Then I get sick when you leave. You’re like a disease to me.”

Sam Shepard Fool for Love

Source: Fool for Love

Time

“Ewwww-eee-wwww. Hey Ash, you vant to suck my blud? (Fang)
No, thanks. The last thing I want is to catch parvo from you, or some other freaky dog disease that makes me lift my leg around hydrants. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Night Embrace

Source: Night Embrace

Dogs

“Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Love, Boy

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his (sic)patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Future

“I wake up wating you. I fall asleep wanting you. I watch a magnificent sunrise and can think only of sharing it with you. I glimpse a piece of amver and see your eyes. Jillian, I've caught a disease, and the fever abates only when I'm near you.”

Karen Marie Moning book To Tame a Highland Warrior

Source: To Tame a Highland Warrior

Thinking

“A tree may look as beautiful as ever; but when you notice the insects infesting it, and the tips of the branches that are brown from disease, even the trunk seems to lose some of its magnificence.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Beauty, Tree

“I'm convinced that responsibility is some kind of psychological disease.”

Brandon Sanderson book Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

“My friend died. (Astrid)
Died how? (Zarek)
Mmm, he had parvo. (Astrid)
Isn’t that a dog’s disease? (Zarek)
Yes. It was tragic. (Astrid)
Hey! I resent that. (Sasha)
Behave or I will give you parvo. (Astrid)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Dogs

“Classifying thoughts, feelings and behaviors as diseases is a logical and semantic error, like classifying whale as fish.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Behavior, Error, Feeling, Fish

“The remedy is worse than the disease.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Seditions and Troubles
Essays (1625)

“We have a name for your disease. We call it a hyper-aesthetic one. You have been encouraged to over-indulge yourself in literature; and have inflamed your organs of fancy.”

Sarah Waters book Fingersmith

Source: Fingersmith

Literature

“The whole family is a bunch of dangerous freaks… Most are ex-cons or junkies or deranged from inbreeding. Five have died violently, three are back in prison, two have gone insane from untreated venereal disease, and one writes book reviews.”

Tim Dorsey book Triggerfish Twist

Source: Triggerfish Twist

Books, Family

“What if reality is nothing but some disease?”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

Reality

“Once you've seen a solution to the disease that's tearing you apart, relapsing is never fun.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

Tear

“There are worse things than finding your wife and child dead. You can watch the world do it. You can watch your wife get old and bored. You can watch your kids discover everything in the world you've tried to save them from. Drugs, divorce, conformity, disease. All the nice clean books, music, television. Distraction. These people with dead children, you want to tell them, go ahead. Blame yourself. There are worse things you can do to the people you love than kill them. The regular way is just to watch the world do it. Just read the newspaper.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3

Love, Children, People, Books

“Those who have the disease called Jesus will never be cured.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus https://books.google.com/books?id=xvv4HcYdxd0C&pg=PA42&dq=%22Those+who+have+the+disease+called+Jesus+will+never+be+cured.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi9_f7L-JTkAhXJ1VkKHfSGDHUQ6AEwAXoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=%22Those%20who%20have%20the%20disease%20called%20Jesus%20will%20never%20be%20cured.%22&f=false (1986), p. 42 1980s Source: The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

“Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgement. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is “Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying,” but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Author’s Note (pp. 276-277)
A Scanner Darkly (1977)

Life, People, Cars, Error

“It's the Marilyn Monroe school of medicine where enough of any drug will cure any disease.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

School

“Look at your body—
A painted puppet, a poor toy
Of jointed parts ready to collapse,
A diseased and suffering thing
With a head full of false imaginings.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Description: from the The Dhammapada
Source: The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

Imagination, Suffering, Parting, Painting

“Diseases of the mind are more common and more pernicious than diseases of the body.”
Morbi perniciosiores pluresque sunt animi quam corporis.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book III, Chapter III
Tusculanae Disputationes – Tusculan Disputations (45 BC)

“Metaphor is one of a group of problem-solving medicines known as figures of speech which are normally used to treat literal thinking and other diseases.”

Grant Morrison book The Filth

Source: The Filth

Problem, Thinking

“This long disease, my life.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Source: Epistles and Satires of Alexander Pope

Life

“For what's the use of talking with a man who has a disease and thinks about the stars?”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

Star, Thinking

“We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: On Love

Love, Intelligence

“Advice for a human

86. To like something is to insult it. Love it or hate it. Be passionate. As civilisation advances, so does indifference. It is a disease. Immunize yourself with art. And love.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

Source: The Humans

Love, Hate, Art, Passion

“Good-bye -- if you hear of my being stood up against a stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease or falling down the cellar stairs.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Life, Age, Way, Thinking

“And when Hugh would grow progressively Gandhi on me, I'd remind him that these were pests---disease carriers who feasted upon the dead and then came indoors to dance upon our silverware.”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Source: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Dance, Dead

“Everyone had a weakness. It was the law of nature that for each being there was a predator, or a disease, or a vulnerability built into their very core.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bites

Law, Nature

“optimism is a disease”

Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children

Source: Midnight's Children

Optimism

“Repressively, Lymond himself answered. “I dislike being discussed as if I were a disease. Nobody ‘got’ me,” he said.”

Dorothy Dunnett (1923–2001) British writer

Source: The Game of Kings

“I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer's disease where they slowly began to recover other people's lost memories.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

People, Thinking, Memory

“We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 9
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Death

“There are some remedies worse than disease.”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Unbelievable

“Whether I or anyone else accepted the concept of alcoholism as a disease didn't matter; what mattered was that when treated as a disease, those who suffered from it were most likely to recover.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Source: American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

Alcohol, Suffering

“Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

When asked by Viereck if he considered himself to be a German or a Jew. A version with slightly different wording is quoted in Einstein: His Life and Universe http://books.google.com/books?id=dJMpQagbz_gC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA386#v=onepage&q&f=false by Walter Isaacson (2007), p. 386 1920s, Viereck interview (1929) Variant: Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. Context: It is quite possible to be both. I look upon myself as a man. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

“The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, 'Create silence'.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Life, World, Silence

“No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means.”

Maimónides (1138–1204) rabbi, physician, philosopher

“We are born with two incurable diseases, life, from which we die, and hope, which says maybe death isn't the end.”

Andrew M. Greeley (1928–2013) Irish-American Roman Catholic priest, sociologist, journalist and novelist

Life, Death, Hope

“It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence (1920), Ch. 33

Life, People, Way, Courage

“The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Alcohol, Affliction

“Beware
At war
Or at peace,
More people die
Of unenlightened self-interest
Than of any other disease”

Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) American science fiction writer

War, People, Peace

“Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.”

Jane Yolen (1939) American speculative fiction and children's writer

Source: Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood

Literature, Childhood

“Now, on this road trip, my mind seemed to uncrinkle, to breathe, to present to itself a cure for a disease it had not, until now, known it had.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: The Year of Pleasures

“Character is not cut in marble - it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch

Change

“Oliver… well. Who knew if Oliver’s problem was the disease or just a bad attitude?”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Carpe Corpus

Problem

“It is chronic water shortage in the body that causes most diseases of the human body.

Dr. Fereydoon Batmanghelidj”

Masaru Emoto (1943–2014) Japanese writer

Source: The Healing Power of Water

Water

“I grew on you, though," Jace stated confidently. "Eventually," Alec agreed. "Like moss, or a skin disease.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Confidence

“Genius is an exaggeration of dimension. So is elephantiasis. Both may be only a disease.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“Fine,” Kyle said. “I’m a werewolf. I’m not part of a pack, but I do have an alliance. Have you heard of the Praetor Lupus?”
“I’ve heard of lupus,” said Simon. “Isn’t it a kind of disease?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Parting

“I tried to tell you. You said you didn't care, remember?"
A muscle ticked below his eye. "You should have told me anyway."
"While you had barbells within your reach? Please. I'm Disease, not Stupid.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Night

Stupidity

“First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

“Medical school had been a time for imaginary diseases and Martin had contracted almost all of them.”

Robin Cook (1931–1994) English crime writer

Source: Brain

School, Time

“Misery is a communicable disease.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

“It hurts when they're gone. And it doesn't matter if it's slow or fast, whether it's a long drawn-out disease or an unexpected accident. When they're gone the world turns upside down and you're left holding on, trying not to fall off.”

Walter Mosley (1952) American writer

Source: Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore

World, Hurt

“Can you ever "solve" poverty? Can you ever "solve" crime? Can you ever "solve" disease, unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell no.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

War, Hell

“The patient is the one with the disease”

Samuel Shem book The House of God

Source: The House of God

“and in some of the people of the town and community surrounding it, one of the characteristic diseases of the twentieth century was making its way: the suspicion that they would be greatly improved if they were somewhere else.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

People, Way, Communication

“I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumours to my dogs.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Dogs, Home, Night

“Your father's an asshole. It's not a disease. You don't have to catch it.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: The Dead Girls' Dance

“When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease - of the joy that kills.”

Kate Chopin book The Story of an Hour

Source: The Story of an Hour

Heart, Joy

“The assumption that everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism.”

David Foster Wallace book The Pale King

Source: The Pale King (2011)

World

“Why are you smiling?'
'I'm relieved,' I said honestly. 'I was worried I'd given myself cadmium poisoning, or I had some mysterious disease. This is just someone trying to kill me.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Variant: Wilem looked at me 'Why are you smiling?'

"I'm relieved", I said honestly." I was worried I had given myself cadmium poisoning, or had a mysterious disease. This is just someone trying to kill me.
Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Smile

Quotes about diseases page 2

Quotes about diseases
page 2