“Appealing to tribe, appealing to fear, pitting one group against another, telling people that order and security will be restored if it weren’t for those who don’t look like us or don’t sound like us or don’t pray like we do, that’s an old playbook. It’s as old as time. And in a healthy democracy it doesn’t work. Our antibodies kick in, and people of goodwill from across the political spectrum callout the bigots and the fearmongers, and work to compromise and get things done and promote the better angels of our nature.” Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America 2018, Speech at the University of Illinoise Speech (2018) Democracy , Time , People , Nature
“It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks latenesses, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patchings to repair great rents in the quotidian.” John Updike book Couples Source: Couples (1968), Ch. 2 Time
“White blood cells and other cells of ours actively seek out and kill foreign microbes. The specific antibodies that we gradually build up against a particular microbe infecting us make us less likely to get reinfected once we become cured. As we all know from experience, there are some illnesses, such as flu and the common cold, to which our resistance is only temporary; we can eventually contract the illness again. Against other illnesses, though—including measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, and the now defeated smallpox — our antibodies stimulated by one infection confer lifelong immunity. That's the principle of vaccination: to stimulate our antibody production without our having to go through the actual experience of the disease, by inoculating us with a dead or weakened strain of microbe.” Jared Diamond book Guns, Germs, and Steel Source: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997), p. 200 Disease , Dead
“Violence is a bit like antibodies. Small doses build up until you can reject and be immune to the most horrific events.” Bernard MacLaverty book Cal Source: Novels, Cal (1983), Ch.5 - p.127