Quotes about virus (127 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Money is like any other virus: once it has rotted the soul of the person who houses it, it sets off in search of new blood.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Money , Soul , Search , Housing

“I'm tired of this back-slappin' "isn't humanity neat" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Shoe

“Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Variant: Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

love , Cute , Heart Touching , Romantic

“I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers than it was in danger of extinction. What would be its feelings toward the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist… I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus.”

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921) member of the British Royal Family, consort to Queen Elizabeth II

Foreword to If I Were an Animal (1987) by Fleur Cowles ISBN 9780688061500
1980s

Feeling , Animals

“Ignorance was the enemy. Lies and superstition, misinformation, disinformation. Sometimes, no information at all. Ignorance killed billions of people. Ignorance caused the Zombie War. Imagine if we had known then what we know now. Imagine if the undead virus had been as understood as, say, tuberculosis was. Imagine if the world’s citizens, or at least those charged with protecting those citizens, had known exactly what they were facing. Ignorance was the real enemy, and cold, hard facts were the weapons.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Page 194-195
World War Z (2006)

War , People , World , Imagination

“Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapse. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existence as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host.”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Ordinary Men and Women
Naked Lunch (1959)
Context: The end result of complete cellular representation is cancer. Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer. A bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised. Bureaus cannot live without a host, being true parasitic organisms. (A cooperative on the other hand can live without the state. That is the road to follow. The building up of independent units to meet needs of the people who participate in the functioning of the unit. A bureau operates on opposite principles of inventing needs to justify its existence.) Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action to the complete parasitism of a virus. (It is thought that the virus is a degeneration from more complex life-form. It may at one time have been capable of independent life. Now has fallen to the borderline between living and dead matter. It can exhibit living qualities only in a host, by using the life of another — the renunciation of life itself, a falling towards inorganic, inflexible machine, towards dead matter.) Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapse. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existence as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host.

“From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus.”

William S. Burroughs book The Ticket That Exploded

The Ticket That Exploded (1962)
Context: The 'Other Half' is the word. The 'Other Half' is an organism. Word is an organism. The presence of the 'Other Half' is a separate organism attached to your nervous system on an air line of words can now be demonstrated experimentally. One of the most common 'hallucinations' of subject during sense withdrawal is the feeling of another body sprawled through the subject's body at an angle... yes quite an angle it is the 'Other Half' worked quite some years on a symbiotic basis. From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.

“The 2019 novel coronavirus is a punishment by nature to humans' unsanitary lifestyle. I promise with my life that the virus has nothing to do with the (Wuhan Institute of Virology) lab.”

Shi Zhengli (1964) Chinese researcher

Shi Zhengli (2020) cited in " China denies lab link to coronavirus as questions over origin mount https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/5/china-denies-lab-link-to-coronavirus-as-questions-/" on The Washington Times, 5 February 2020.

Life , Nature

“Why do we argue? Life's so fragile, a successful virus clinging to a speck of mud, suspended in endless nothing.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

Life , Success

“Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading, it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

“Lyc-V is a jealous virus. It exterminates all other invaders with extreme prejudice.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

“Only one form of contagion travels faster than a virus. And that's fear.”

Dan Brown book Inferno

Source: Inferno

Fear , Travel

“…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.”

John Irving book The Cider House Rules

Source: The Cider House Rules

Love

“He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.”

Henry Miller book Sexus

Context: A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in....

The Rosy Crucifixion I : Sexus (1949), Chapter 1. (New York: Grove Press, c1965, p. 17-18)

World

“This Snow Crash thing--is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?”

Juanita shrugs. “What's the difference?”

Neal Stephenson book Snow Crash

Source: Snow Crash

Religion

“I do not think there is any single thing more important for our people, and for those who form public opinion, than to keep our people immune, so far as they can be so kept, from the virus of either Communism or Fascism. Our constitution has been evolved… There are some people who speak wildly and loosely about sudden and fundamental changes. Look out for them, and remember that our party, full of ideas of progress to-day as any other party that exists, has always stood, in Disraeli's words, "for the maintenance of the Constitution."… any attempt at sudden constitutional changes of a fundamental nature would not be maintaining the Constitution… the whole virtue of our people… has been the way in which we have adapted ourselves, and adapted the instruments that we use to give effect to our wishes; and we have adapted ourselves without bloodshed and without hatred among ourselves. Far, far the most important thing that we have to do is to keep this country at least… secure from those strange crises that to-day are rushing round the world.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Bewdley Unionist Association in Worcester (10 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 102-104.
1937

People , World , Way , Communication

“There certainly seems to be a strong correlation between religion and insanity. I’ve read a few papers comparing the logical and psychological aptitude of strong believers vs those with little or no faith at all, and the trends there all seem to be in our favor, but not to the point that religion causes the disorder. I think certain mental disorders can prompt religious beliefs, but that’s a different claim. I think religion provides a haven to conceal quite a lot of cognitive and psychiatric disorders as well as some social dysfunctions. But that doesn’t mean religion is a mental illness, regardless how accurate analogies of the God virus might be. I think there are circumstances when religion can be treated as a psychological condition, especially when it is the result of detrimental conditioning, but I wouldn’t confuse that with a psychiatric malady, which (I think) would have to be physiological/chemical.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"How crazy is religion?" http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2014/05/07/how-crazy-is-religion/, Patheos (May 7, 2014)
Patheos

God , Faith , Religion , Thinking

“If language is a virus from space, even people could be disguised aliens on our planet, because language is inextricably bound to human mental processes, in the forms of our intelligence, to the extent that symbolic language is what makes us different from other living beings.”

Caterina Davinio (1957) Italian writer

Source: Virtual Mercury House. Planetary & Interplanetary Events, p. 48

People , Intelligence

“The virus was not helping. He had hoped that it would, but the feelings it brought were too superficial. When he most needed their succour he could feel them for the paper-thin façades they were. Just because the virus was tickling the parts of his brain that produced feelings of religious experience didn’t mean he was able to turn off the other parts of his mind that recognised these feelings as having been induced artificially. He truly felt himself to be in the presence of something sacred, but he also knew, with total clarity, that this was due to neuroanatomy. Nothing was really with him: the organ music, the stained-glass windows in the sky, the sense of proximity to something huge and timeless and infinitely compassionate were all explicable in terms of neural wiring, firing potentials, synaptic gaps.”

Alastair Reynolds book Absolution Gap

Source: Absolution Gap (2003), Chapter 9 (p. 136)

Hope , Music , Feeling , Sense

“I hope, said the third, that your wanderings in lonely places do not mean that you have any of the romantic virus still in your blood. His name was Mr. Humanist.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 90
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Hope

“You are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half billion years ago. You are the blind and arbitrary product of time, chance, and natural forces. You are a mere grab-bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a universe. You are a purely biological entity, different only in degree but not in kind from a microbe, virus, or amoeba. You have no essence beyond your body, and at death you will cease to exist entirely. In short you come from nothing and are going to nowhere.”

Randy Alcorn (1954) American Protestant author

Quoted in Dinesh D'Souza, What's so Great About Christianity (Regnery, 2007), p. 15

Death , Nature , Universe , Chance

“Is a virus a living organism? What is a gene, and how does the original genetic constitution of a living organism express itself in the developed characteristics of the adult? Do complex protein molecules "know how" to reduplicate their pattern, and is this an essential clue to the problem of reproduction of living creatures? All these are certainly complex problems, but they are not problems of disorganized complexity, to which statistical methods hold the key. They are all problems which involve dealing simultaneously with a sizable number of factors which are interrelated into an organic whole. They are all, in the language here proposed, problems of organized complexity.”

Warren Weaver (1894–1978) American mathematician

Source: Science and Complexity, 1948, p. 537

Problem

“Every little school boy is trained to recite the weaknesses and inefficiencies of the Articles of Confederation. It is taken as axiomatic that under them the new nation was falling into anarchy and was only saved by the wisdom and energy of the Convention. … The nation had to be strong to repel invasion, strong to pay to the last loved copper penny the debts of the propertied and the provident ones, strong to keep the unpropertied and improvident from ever using the government to secure their own prosperity at the expense of moneyed capital. … No one suggests that the anxiety of the leaders of the heretofore unquestioned ruling classes desired the revision of the Articles and labored so weightily over a new instrument not because the nation was failing under the Articles, but because it was succeeding only too well. Without intervention from the leaders, reconstruction threatened in time to turn the new nation into an agrarian and proletarian democracy. … All we know is that at a time when the current of political progress was in the direction of agrarian and proletarian democracy, a force hostile to it gripped the nation and imposed upon it a powerful form against which it was never to succeed in doing more than blindly struggle. The liberating virus of the Revolution was definitely expunged, and henceforth if it worked at all it had to work against the State, in opposition to the armed and respectable power of the nation.”

Randolph Bourne (1886–1918) American writer

¶13. Published under "The Development of the American State," The State https://mises.org/library/state (Tucson, Arizona: See Sharp Press, 1998), pp. 33–34.
"The State" (1918), II

Love , Wisdom , Money , Hostility

“Great writers arrive among us like new diseases – threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.”

Craig Raine (1944) Poet

The Independent on Sunday, November 18, 1990.

Disease

“Aids is Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. I don't believe it's a sensible thing to ask: 'Does a virus cause a syndrome?' It can't. A virus will cause a disease. The syndrome is a group of diseases as a result of immune deficiency. As a result of immune deficiency you suffer various diseases.”

Thabo Mbeki (1942) South African politician, President of South Africa

Source: August 2000, addressing South African Parliament http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?articleid=173678&area=%2farchives%2farchives__online_edition%2f http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jun/12/aids.chrismcgreal.

Disease , Suffering

““Simple old-fashioned death, the kind that predated the singularity, used to be the inevitable halting state for all life-forms. Fairy tales about afterlives notwithstanding.” A dry chuckle: “I used to try to believe a different one before breakfast every day, you know, just in case Pascal’s wager was right—exploring the phase-space of all possible resurrections, you know? But I think at this point we can agree that Dawkins was right. Human consciousness is vulnerable to certain types of transmissible memetic virus, and religions that promise life beyond death are a particularly pernicious example because they exploit our natural aversion to halting states.””

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 9 (“Survivor”), pp. 396-397

Life , Death , Religion , Fashion

“I hate when your friends quit drinking on you, don't you? It's sad. I've lost more friends to AA than Liberace did to the virus. It's sad to see 'em go. You see a thirty day chip on your buddy's key ring, it's like seeing a toe tag on his cold, stiff corpse.”

Doug Stanhope (1967) American stand-up comedian, actor, and author

Something to Take the Edge Off (2000)

Hate , Sadness , Drink

“Well, if you take a roll of film and instead of making pictures on it, you process it by pickling it in vinegar and putting it in a jar and presenting it for people to look at that way, projected through the lens of the fluid around it, this is so distorted and such a monstrous disfigurement of the normal way in which you are 'supposed to use' film, that it is a kind of pathology; it’s a sickness in the sense of a virus being inserted in the system. I think wellness and change are measured by comparison to potential for extremes of illness or death. I was trying to kill film. I wanted to let it lay over and die.”

Tony Conrad (1940–2016) American filmmaker, violinist and composer

Tony Conrad cited in: Jean-Michel Maulpoix (2005) A Matter of Blue Vol 92-94. p. 35.

Death , People , Way , Thinking

“The trend toward narcissistic flair has been responsible in large part for smiting rock with the superstar virus, which revolves around the substituting of attitudes and flamboyant trappings, into which the audience can project their fantasies, for the simple desire to make music, get loose, knock the folks out or get 'em up dancin.' It's not enough just to do those things anymore; what you must do instead if you want success on any large scale is figure a way of getting yourself associated in the audience's mind with their pieties and their sense of "community," i. e., ram it home that you're one of THEM; or, alternately, deck and bake yourself into an image configuration so blatant or outrageous that you become a culture myth.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

"James Taylor Marked for Death" (1971), p. 67
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (1988)

Music , Way , Home , Communication

“The sidaïques, by breathing the virus through all their pores, put into question the equilibrium of the nation… The sidaïque is contagious by his sweat, his saliva, his contact. It's a kind of leper.”

Jean-Marie Le Pen (1928) French right-wing and nationalist politician

Statement on the TV station Antenne 2 (6 May 1987)

Question

“[Duesberg] is absolutely correct in saying that no one has proven that AIDS is caused by the AIDS virus. And he is absolutely correct that the virus cultured in the laboratory may not be the cause of AIDS.”

Walter Gilbert (1932) American biochemist

Hippocrates (Sept./Oct. 1988)

“Senators leap up and bray for the Death Penalty with inflexible authority of virus yen… Death for dope fiends, death for sex queens (I mean friends) death for the psychopath who offends the cowed and graceless flesh with broken animal innocence of lithe movements. The black wind of death undulates over the land, feeling, smelling for the crime of separate life, movers of the fear-frozen flesh shivering under a vast probability curve… Populations blocks disappear in a checker game of genocide… Any number can play…”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Atrophied Preface
Naked Lunch (1959)

Life , Death , Fear , Penalty

“I have remarked, in the course of such air travel as I have done, that the airmen of all nations have a common resemblance to each other and that the patriotic virus in their blood is largely corrected by a wider professionalism.”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

The Outlook for Homo Sapiens (1942)

Travel

“Al Qaeda is a virus and it is spreading. If we fail to stop it, we will pay a very heavy price.”

Barham Salih (1960) President of Iraq

"Iraq: The Regional Security Dimension" http://www.weforum.org/en/knowledge/Events/2007/WorldEconomicForumontheMiddleEast/KN_SESS_SUMM_21329?url=/en/knowledge/Events/2007/WorldEconomicForumontheMiddleEast/KN_SESS_SUMM_21329 (May 2007)
2000s

“We were told in one lecture that it was possible to immunize against diphtheria and tetanus by the use of chemically treated toxins, or toxoids. And the following lecture, we were told that for immunization against a virus disease, you have to experience the infection, and that you could not induce immunity with the so-called "killed" or inactivated, chemically treated virus preparation. Well, somehow, that struck me. What struck me was that both statements couldn't be true. And I asked why this was so, and the answer that was given was in a sense, 'Because.'”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

There was no satisfactory answer.
Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

Disease , Sense

“There are three stages of truth. First is that it can't be true, and that's what they said. You couldn't immunize against polio with a killed-virus vaccine. Second phase: they say, "Well, if it's true, it's not very important. And the third stage is, 'Well, we've known it all along."”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

Truth

“The curtains were drawn, and the only source of light - indeed, the object to which my attention was suddenly exclusively drawn - was a lit candle on the kitchen table, that had probably originally been shaped like Snoopy but was now a mass of melted rivulets, as if Snoopy had fallen victim to some kind of flesh-eating virus.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Source: Fullyramblomatic Novels, Fog Juice, Chapter One

Light

“It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

" Is Science a Religion? http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/articles/dawkins.html", The Humanist (January 1997)

World , Disease , Faith , Fashion

“The Orlando terrorist may be dead, but the virus that poisoned his mind remains very much alive. And we must attack it with clear eyes, steady hands, unwavering determination and pride in our country and our values.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

Dead , Country

“I've had letters from Chinese scientists at the peak of the SARS epidemic who said the problem is a hybridization between the viruses planted into GMO feed, which is then fed to animals, then the virus jumped from the animals to humans. We're going to see more and more of these kinds of risks. I think the whole issue of the H1N1 virus was the fact that it had genes for three influenza types--human, chicken, pig. All of these crossings are becoming possible because of the crossing of genes across species barriers.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

On the SARS epidemic, as quoted in " A Visit to My Kitchen: Vandana Shiva http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maria-rodale/a-visit-to-my-kitchen-van_b_775298.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in", The Huffington Post (28 October 2011)

Problem , Thinking , Animals

“There’s no forgiveness built into the system. I told Barbara so, dozens of times. She was always marching off to save the whales, save the trees, save some goddamn thing. It was endearing. But in the back of my head I always heard Dad’s voice: ‘This is only a holding action. Nothing is ever really saved.’ Barbara thought the greenhouse effect was like a virus, something you could stop if you came up with the right vaccine. I told her it was a cancer—the cancer of humanity on the vital organs of the earth. You can’t stop that by marching.”
“Isn’t that a little like giving up?”
“I think it’s called acceptance.”
Archer stood and walked to the door, where his silhouette obscured the motion of the trees.
“Very bleak attitude, Tom.”

Robert Charles Wilson book A Bridge of Years

“Experience bears it out.”
Source: A Bridge of Years (1991), Chapter 3 (pp. 52-53)

Forgiveness , Thinking , Tree , Time

“Biotech companies spread patented genetic sequences via the natural ecosystem—much like a computer virus. Then they use the legal system to claim ownership of any organism their patented genetic sequences invade. They are raiding communal seed banks, obtaining patents for naturally occurring apples, sugar beets, corn, and a host of other plants and animals. They have immorally seized control of the food system and stand poised to claim ownership of life itself unless we take action.”

Daniel Suarez book Freedom™

Source: Freedom™ (2010), Chapter 9: Seed Police

Life , Food , Communication , Nature

“The way in which our society does do honor to its indubitably great men … is a study in immunizing people against their virus. … They are the menagerie of Very Important People who exist only for ceremonial occasions. … The effectually prevents the two practical uses that we could make of them. We neither take seriously the simple, direct, fearless souls that they invariably are, whether humble or arrogant, to model ourselves after them because they make more sense as human beings; nor do we have recourse the them to help us when we have need of exceptional purity, magnanimity, profundity, or imagination.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 152.

Men , People , Way , Soul

“England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there…. We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space….. A virus has attacked the world of sense and sensibility, and it has spread to Nigeria…. The assumption of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim in the world-as if someone had given them a new stature…Al Qaeda is the descendent of this phenomenon. The proselytization of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi Arabia. Madrassas were established everywhere.”

Wole Soyinka (1934) Nigerian writer

Wole Soyinka: Duncan Gardham - Mutallab: Again Soyinka Blames UK For Breeding Terrorists http://thewillnigeria.com/world/3592-Mutallab-Again-Soyinka-Blames-For-Breeding-Terrorists.html - TheWill, February 2, 2010</ref><ref>James Meikle - England is 'cesspit' breeding Islamists, says Soyinka http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/02/soyinka-england-cesspit-islamists - The Guardian, February 2, 2010

Life , Death , People , World

“The position of Pope Paul came close to being a pan-Deism, and pan-Deism is the logical development of the virus of Hellenic thought.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, ‘’The One and the Many‘’ (1971), Ch. VIII-7, p. 142.

“Hey folks, tonight I wanna talk about global warming. Now, The World is Hot and Flat Society is growing increasingly hysterical and that indeed is causing me to sweat a little. In the last month or so, I've heard suggestions that those skeptical of Al Gore's spiritual crisis are deniers and one good way to serve the planet would be to have one less kid and I've also read that mankind is 'a virus' and human beings are 'the AIDS of the earth.' Global warming is officially becoming creepy and I can't tell yet if it's facisitc or fetishistic but it's kinda like piercing or tattoos, I don't even wanna get one, because I see how hooked people are and it spooks me. I just find it odd that we've come to a point in history where if I don't concede that if Manhattan will be completely submerged in 2057 I'm thought to be a delusional contrarian by some of my more zealous fellow citizens. I'm sorry Angst Squad, but if we commissioned a public works project (let's call it 'The Manhattan Project') and tried our hardest to submerge Manhattan in the next 50 years, we couldn't pull it off, mainly because it wouldn't be environmentally sound and you guys would hang it up in the permitting process. Simply put, I can't worry about the earth right now because I'm too worried about the world. Why can't I take terrorism as seriously as Al Gore takes global warming? There are times that you think that liberals only fear car bombs if they have leaky exhaust systems. And why am I constantly beaten over the head with 'the delicate balance of nature'? Am I the only one who watches Animal Planet? Every time I turn it on, I see some demented harp seal chucking peguins down his gullet like they were maitre d'Tic-Tacs. To me, nature always appears more unbalanced than Gary Busey with a clogged eustachian tube. Listen, the weather is just like Hilary's explanation for her war vote: we just don't know, do we? We're here to miss our next Tuesday's weather much less the year 2057. Relax, we'll replace oil when we need to. American ingenuity will kick in and the next great fortune will be made. It's not pretty, but it is historically accurate. We need to run out of oil first. That's why I drive an SUV: so we run out of it more quickly. I consider myself at the vanguard of the environmental movement and I think the individuals who insist on driving hybrids are just prolonging our dillemma and I think that's just selfish. Come on, don't you care about our Mother Earth? Don'tcha?”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

6/17 The Half Hour News Hour
The Buck Starts Here

War , People , World , Fear

“At a certain point I came to the conclusion that one of the murderous aspects of the AIDS crisis was that people were used to not talking about sexual experiences in detail. Gay sex for instance does not cause AIDS. There are certain acts that transmit a virus and there are certain other acts that don’t transmit a virus. If you don’t talk about what goes on in sexuality, so that you know what particular acts you’re dealing with, then I think you're, possibly in an indirect way but never-the-less in a very real way, contributing to an atmosphere of ignorance which the result is people die.”

Samuel R. Delany (1942) American author, professor and literary critic

Spoken Arts interview on WBFO 88.7, 20th April 2000.

People , Sex , Way , Thinking

“Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Gods and Greens" (1989)
1990s, A View from the Diner's Club (1991)

Thinking

“The social conditions that nourished and made use of this ideology can still revive; perhaps - who knows? - the virus is dormant, waiting for the next opportunity. Dreams about the perfect society belong to the enduring stock of civilization.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

New Preface, p. vi
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978)

Dreams , Waiting , Perfection

“We must move with speed to mobilise all sectors of society in a stepped-up drive against HIV/AIDS, accelerating the pace to halt the virus before the Pacific's window of opportunity slams shut.”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

Address to the Pan Pacific HIV/AIDS Conference, Auckland, New Zealand, October 2005

Speed

“God, think of the great men that have nibbled on me, and now I'm nothing but a snack for a virus - something that can't even decide if it's a plant or an animal.”

Robert Patrick (playwright) (1937) Playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, novelist

"Pouf Positive"
Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance (1988)

Men , God , Thinking , Animals

“Interviewer: It seems to be acknowledged that there're more people out there supporting the aims of Al-Qaeda and groups like them, and are willing to die, as a result of this war, than perhaps there were previously?

Hitchens: Well, you could as easily say that the number of people who used to be based in Afghanistan, have, as a result of the intervention there, relocated themselves and spread the virus in that way. Both of these arguments lead to only one terminus, which is: we should surrender to jihadism, and not try to oppose it, in case we make them upset.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Scotland Live (2005-10-31}: On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2005

War , People , Way , Support

“The second requirement of a virus-friendly environment – that it should obey a program of coded instructions – is again only quantitatively less true for brains than for cells or computers. We sometimes obey orders from one another, but also we sometimes don't. Nevertheless, it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions. Instructions to genuflect, to bow towards Mecca, to nod one's head rhythmically towards the wall, to shake like a maniac, to "speak in tongues" – the list of such arbitrary and pointless motor patterns offered by religion alone is extensive – are obeyed, if not slavishly, at least with some reasonably high statistical probability.”

Richard Dawkins book Viruses of the Mind

Viruses of the Mind (1993)

Children , World , Religion , Parent

“Like computer viruses, successful mind viruses will tend to be hard for their victims to detect. If you are the victim of one, the chances are that you won't know it, and may even vigorously deny it. Accepting that a virus might be difficult to detect in your own mind, what tell-tale signs might you look out for? I shall answer by imaging how a medical textbook might describe the typical symptoms of a sufferer”

Richard Dawkins book Viruses of the Mind

arbitrarily assumed to be male
Viruses of the Mind (1993)

Suffering , Chance , Success

“Grand Theft Auto IV is the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio. We now have vaccines for that virus… The 'vaccine' that must be administered by the United States government to deal with this virtual virus of violence and sexual depravity is criminal prosecutions of those who have conspired to do this.”

Jack Thompson (attorney) (1951) American activist and disbarred attorney

Letter to US Attorney R. Alexander Acosta, quoted in [2008-04-28, GTA IV sex video gives Thompson, other critics fresh ammo, Ben Kuchera, Ars Technica, http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/04/jack-thompson-targets-gta-iv-with-an-unlikely-ally-ign/, 2014-11-18]

Children , Country

“Yeah. ‘Environment’ was very big for a while. Ecology Now stickers on the windshields of cars belonging to hairy young men—cars which dripped oil wherever they parked and took off in clouds of smoke thicker than your pipe can produce…Before long, the fashionable cause was something else, I forget what. Anyhow, that whole phase—the wave after wave of causes—passed away. People completely stopped caring…
I feel a moral certainty that a large part of the disaster grew from this particular country, the world’s most powerful, the vanguard country for things both good and ill…never really trying to meet the responsibilities of power.
We’ll make halfhearted attempts to stop some enemies in Asia, and because the attempts are halfhearted we’ll piss away human lives—on both sides—and treasure—to no purpose. Hoping to placate the implacable, we’ll estrange our last few friends. Men elected to national office will solemnly identify inflation with rising prices, which is like identifying red spots with the measles virus, and slap on wage and price controls, which is like papering the cracks in a house whose foundations are sliding away. So economic collapse brings international impotence…As for our foolish little attempts to balance what we drain from the environment against what we put back—well, I mentioned that car carrying the ecology sticker.
At first Americans will go on an orgy of guilt. Later they’ll feel inadequate. Finally they’ll turn apathetic. After all, they’ll be able to buy any anodyne, any pseudo-existence they want.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 5 (pp. 53-54)

Men , People , World , Hope

“I was born a vegetarian, I think. Since infancy I never liked meat, never ate it, never ate turkey, chicken, fish or eggs. … I'm so healthy it's embarrassing. If I felt any better I'd have to see a doctor. … I truly believe that fruit is the body's cleanser, vegetables are the body's healer, and meat is the body's premature aging agent and the cause of all diseases except virus disease.”

Roy Hilligenn (1922–2008) South African bodybuilder

Interview by Osmo Kiiha; quoted in Clarence Bass, Challenge Yourself: Leanness, Fitness & Health at Any Age https://books.google.it/books?id=FSfwAAAAMAAJ (C. Bass' Ripped Enterprises, 1999), p. 202.

Age , Disease , Thinking , Fish

“My big problem with corporate structure is this bizarre sense of loyalty you're supposed to feel -- towards what is basically a virus. It grows or dies, like any virus. And you use it for your own selfish ends.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

source http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10464376/radioheads_thom_yorke_on_going_solo/2
On the record industry.

Feeling , Problem , Sense , Loyalty

“"You kids think you invented sex," my mother was fond of saying. But hadn't we? With no instruction manual or federally enforced training period, didn't we all come away feeling we'd discovered something unspeakably modern? What produced in others a feeling of exhilaration left Jason and me with a mortifying feeling of guilt. We fled the room as if, in our fumblings, we had uncapped some virus we still might escape if we ran fast enough. Had one of the counselors not caught me scaling the fence, I felt certain I could have made it back to Raleigh by morning, skittering across the surface of the ocean like one of those lizards often featured on television wildlife programs.”

David Sedaris Naked

Essay: "I like guys". (p.106-107) [Page numbers per the 2006 Abacus paperback edition.]
Naked (1997)

Feeling , Sex , Training , Thinking

“Think about the two qualities that a virus, or any sort of parasitic replicator, demands of a friendly medium, the two qualities that make cellular machinery so friendly towards parasitic DNA, and that make computers so friendly towards computer viruses. These qualities are, firstly, a readiness to replicate information accurately, perhaps with some mistakes that are subsequently reproduced accurately; and, secondly, a readiness to obey instructions encoded in the information so replicated.”

Richard Dawkins book Viruses of the Mind

Viruses of the Mind (1993)

Thinking

“Think about the strangeness of today's situation. Thirty, forty years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be: communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on. So the paradox is, that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.”

Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher

Žižek! (2005); as Žižek notes on p. 1 of Mapping Ideology (1994), the observation that it is easier to imagine the end of the earth than the end of capitalism was originally made by Fredric Jameson.

Life , Imagination , Thinking , Change

“Columbus, I guess it all did start with Columbus. … To me he was like a virus, a disease. I spent a lot of time protesting, trying to figure out how to deal with this disease. I think we really need to put serious thought into understanding that we're dealing with a disease.”

John Trudell (1946–2015) Native American rights activist, musician, poet

Columbus Day Speech, San Francisco (1992)

Disease , Understanding , Thinking , Time

“Its importance is that if R[egulator] is fixed in its channel capacity, the law places an absolute limit to the amount of regulation (or control) that can be achieved by R, no matter how R is re-arranged internally, or how great the opportunity in T. Thus the ecologist, if his capacity as a channel is unchangeable, may be able at best only to achieve a fraction of what he would like to do. This fraction may be disposed in various ways —he may decide to control outbreaks rather than extensions, or virus infections rather than bacillary — but the quantity of control that he can exert is still bounded. So too the economist may have to decide to what aspect he shall devote his powers, and the psychotherapist may have to decide what symptoms shall be neglected and what controlled.”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

Source: An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956), Part 3: Regulation and control, p. 245: Regarding the law of requisite variety

Law , Way

“We have already discovered two species that are very intelligent but technically less advanced than us — the common chimpanzee and pygmy chimpanzee. Has our response been to sit down and try to communicate with them? Of course not. Instead we shoot them, stuff them, dissect them, cut off their hands for trophies, put them on exhibit in cages, inject them with AIDS virus as a medical experiment, and destroy or take over their habitat. That response was predictable, because human explorers who discovered technically less advanced humans also regularly responded by shooting them, decimating their populations with new diseases, and destroying or taking over their habitat. Any advanced extraterrestrials who discovered us would surely treat us in the same way…If there really are any radio civilizations within listening distance of us, then for heaven's sake let's turn off our own transmitters and try to escape detection, or we are doomed.”

Jared Diamond book The Third Chimpanzee

The Third Chimpanzee (1991)
The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (1991)

Disease , Way , Intelligence , Communication

“The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell by cell…. Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus. 'The Human Virus can now be isolated and treated.”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Islam Incorporated and the Parties of Interzone
Naked Lunch (1959)

War

“When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Pt. 1
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“I was never really in love with acting. I always love movies and going to the theater. But did I love being in this business? Not for five minutes. I did it because I needed a job. For the first year or two, it's like a poison that enters your body. It's like a virus, and your body has to release antidotes. But it would be very unfair to say that it's that way all the time. It's just like anything this overwhelming that you enter suddenly. It's like being a contact at West Point. You're thrown into an intense environment. From the word go, you realize it's sink or swim.”

Alec Baldwin (1954) American actor, writer, producer, and comedian

As quoted in "The Hunt for Alec Baldwin", by Phoebe Hoban, in New York magazine, Vol. 23, No. 9 (5 March 1990).

Love , Way , Business , Time

“These days too many children's movies are infected by the virus of Winning, as if kids are nothing more than underage pro athletes, and the values of Vince Lombardi prevail: It's not how you play the game, but whether you win or lose. This is a movie that breaks with that tradition, that allows its kids to be kids, that shows them in the insular world of imagination and dreaming that children create entirely apart from adult domains and values. There was a moment in the film when Rodriguez hit a line drive directly at the pitcher's mound, and I ducked and held up my mitt, and then I realized I didn't have a mitt, and it was then I also realized how completely this movie had seduced me with its memories of what really matters when you are 12.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-sandlot-1993 of The Sandlot (7 April 1993)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Children , World , Dreams , Imagination

“I just want them to know that it happened for a reason.”
“Look, Tyler, some things just happen.” This close, the stillness of the ghost plane was overwhelming.
“But why did they die instead of us?” the boy asked, with an air of patiently reciting a well-rehearsed argument. His gaze was unblinking.
“Because they were exposed to a certain virus, and we weren’t. You can look for reasons, and god knows a few people here have driven themselves half-crazy trying, but Tyler, that’s all there is.”
“What if we were saved for a different reason?”
“Saved?” Clark was remembering why he didn’t talk to Tyler very often.
“Some people were saved. People like us.”
“What do you mean, ‘people like us’?”
“People who were good,” Tyler said.”People who weren’t weak.”

Emily St. John Mandel book Station Eleven

“Look, it’s not a question of having been bad or...the people in there, in the Air Gradia jet, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Source: Station Eleven (2014), Chapter 44 (pp. 259-260)

God , People , Boy , Question

“They had no business of their own to mind because they didn't belong to themselves any more. They belonged to the virus. They had to kill torture conquer enslave degrade as a mad dog has to bite. At Hiroshima all was lost.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

"Astronaut's Return"
Exterminator! A Novel (1971)
Context: According to legend the white race results from a nuclear explosion in what is now the Gobi desert some 30,000 years ago. The civilization and techniques which made the explosion possible were wiped out. The only survivors were slaves marginal to the area who had no knowledge of its science or techniques. They became albinos as a result of radiation and scattered in different directions. Some of them went into Persia northern India Greece and Turkey. Others moved westward and settled in the caves of Europe. The descendants of the cave-dwelling albinos are the present inhabitants of America and western Europe. In these caves the white settlers contracted a virus passed down along their cursed generations that was to make them what they are today a hideous threat to life on the planet. This virus this ancient parasite is what Freud calls the unconscious spawned in the caves of Europe on flesh already diseased from radiation. Anyone descended from this line is basically different from those who have not had the cave experience and contracted this deadly sickness that lives in your blood and bones and nerves that lives where you used to live before your ancestors crawled into their filthy caves. When they came out of the caves they couldn't mind their own business. They had no business of their own to mind because they didn't belong to themselves any more. They belonged to the virus. They had to kill torture conquer enslave degrade as a mad dog has to bite. At Hiroshima all was lost.

Dogs , Business , Madness

“Victimless crimes are the lifeline of the RIGHT virus. And there is a growing recognition, even in official quarters, that victimless crimes should be removed from the books or subject to minimal penalties.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

The Place Of Dead Roads‎ (1983), p. 155
Context: Victimless crimes are the lifeline of the RIGHT virus. And there is a growing recognition, even in official quarters, that victimless crimes should be removed from the books or subject to minimal penalties. Those individuals who cannot or will not mind their business cling to the victimless-crime concept, equating drug use and private sexual behavior with robbery and murder. If the right to mind one's own business is recognized, the whole shit disposition is untenable and Hell hath no vociferous fury than an endangered parasite.

Books , Penalty

“We are the party of human rights—the only party of human rights that will be speaking from this platform this month. (Loud applause.) The struggle against racialism is a worldwide fight. It is the dignity of man for which we are fighting. If what we assert is true for Birmingham, it is true for Bulawayo. If ever there were a condemnation of the values of the party which forms the Opposition it is the fact that the virus of Powellism has taken so firm a hold at every level.”

Harold Wilson (1916–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (1 October 1968), quoted in The Times (2 October 1968), p. 4
Prime Minister

Fight

“A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in….”

Henry Miller book Sexus

The Rosy Crucifixion I : Sexus (1949), Chapter 1. (New York: Grove Press, c1965, p. 17-18)

Courage , Falseness , Way , World

“No virus is known to do good: it has been well said that a virus is "a piece of bad news wrapped up in protein."”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

(with Jean Medawar) Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology, 1983, p. 275.
1980s

Bad luck

“This coronavirus, they're just — all of this panic is just not warranted. This, I'm telling you, when I tell you — when I've told you that this virus is the common cold. When I said that, it was based on the number of cases. It's also based on the kind of virus this is.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

The Rush Limbaugh Show, , quoted in " Rush Limbaugh: Coronavirus is like the common cold, and “all of this panic is just not warranted” https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/rush-limbaugh-coronavirus-common-cold-and-all-panic-just-not-warranted", Media Matters (
2020s

“Calm, calm down. The (COVID-19) virus has become rampant. Everyone here is anxious.”

Gao Fu (1961) Chinese virologist and immunologist

Gao Fu (2020) cited in " China Urges Calm Over Virus During ‘Critical Period’ https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-urges-calm-over-virus-during-critical-period-11580045718" on The Wall Street Journal, 26 January 2020.

“Based on the virus genome and properties, there is no indication whatsoever that COVID-19 was an engineered virus.”

Richard H. Ebright (1959) American molecular biologist

Richard H. Ebright (2020) cited in " Experts debunk fringe theory linking China’s coronavirus to weapons research https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/29/experts-debunk-fringe-theory-linking-chinas-coronavirus-weapons-research/" on The Washington Post, 31 January 2020.

“And it is the body's hysterical overreaction to a virus, rather than the virus itself, that makes us ill.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Three, Brains Changing, Minds Changing

Making love

“The virus is spreading all over the world and nations of the world should have peace to fight with this dangerous virus.”

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi (1979) Yemeni official

Original: (ar) و وباء #كورونا يجتاح العالم مهددا للبشريةندعو مجلس الأمن والأمين العام للأمم المتحدة انتونيو غوتيرش @antoniojuterres
لايقاف القوى المعتدية عن عدوانها على الشعب اليمني وفك الحصار عليه
فالوباء ينتشر بكافة أنحاء العالم ويجب أن تنعم شعوب العالم بالسلام وتتمكن من مكافحة الوباء الخطير

On a Twitter post https://twitter.com/Moh_Alhouthi/status/1242028208490414080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw (March 23, 2020). Translated https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/mar/23/coronavirus-live-updates-uk-us-italy-germany-europe-outbreak-cases-meetings-bans-update-latest-news?page=with:block-5e78dedd8f08e46329cb44ff#block-5e78dedd8f08e46329cb44ff by The Guardian.

Fight , Peace , World

“My administration has done a job on really working across government and with the private sector, and it’s been incredible. It’s a beautiful thing to watch, I have to say. Unfortunately, the end result of the group we’re fighting — which are hundreds of billions and trillions of germs, or whatever you want to call them — they are bad news. This virus is bad news and it moves quickly, and it spreads as easily as anything anyone has ever seen.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

As quoted in Remarks by President Trump in a Meeting with Supply Chain Distributors on COVID-19 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-supply-chain-distributors-covid-19/ (March 29, 2020), whitehouse.gov.
2020s, 2020, March

Fight , Bad luck , Beauty

“Once a virus gets into an intensive poultry shed it can move quickly through the flock, constantly replicating itself. Any "errors" or changes to the genetic code during replication don't get repaired: this is how the virus mutates and new variant strains emerge. The tragedy is that while intensive farms provide ideal conditions for the emergence of new aggressive disease strains, wild birds can then become infected too. Experience from the 2005 outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (AI) H5N1 suggests that the disease is more likely spread along major road and rail routes than on the flight routes of migratory birds.”

Philip Lymbery book Farmageddon

Farmageddon (2014)

Bird , Error , Disease , Change

“We’ve said from the beginning that our greatest concern is the impact this virus could have if it gains a foothold in countries with weaker health systems, or with vulnerable populations. That concern has now become very real and urgent. We know that if this disease takes hold in these countries, there could be significant sickness and loss of life. But that is not inevitable. Unlike any pandemic in history, we have the power to change the way this goes.”

Tedros Adhanom (1965) Director-General of the World Health Organization, former Minister in Ethiopia

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 20 March 2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---20-march-2020, World Health Organization.

Loss , History , Country , Health

“Every day, we are learning more about this virus and the disease it causes. One of the things we are learning is that although older people are the hardest hit, younger people are not spared. Data from many countries clearly show that people under 50 make up a significant proportion of patients requiring hospitalization. Today, I have a message for young people: you are not invincible. This virus could put you in hospital for weeks, or even kill you. Even if you don’t get sick, the choices you make about where you go could be the difference between life and death for someone else. I’m grateful that so many young people are spreading the word and not the virus. As I keep saying, solidarity is the key to defeating COVID-19 - solidarity between countries, but also between age groups. Thank you for heeding our call for solidarity, solidarity, solidarity.”

Tedros Adhanom (1965) Director-General of the World Health Organization, former Minister in Ethiopia

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 20 March 2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---20-march-2020, World Health Organization.

Making love , Country , People , Learning

“Every day, COVID-19 seems to reach a new and tragic milestone. More than 210,000 cases have now been reported to WHO, and more than 9,000 people have lost their lives. Every loss of life is a tragedy. It’s also motivation to double down and do everything we can to stop transmission and save lives. We also need to celebrate our successes. Yesterday, Wuhan reported no new cases for the first time since the outbreak started. Wuhan provides hope for the rest of the world, that even the most severe situation can be turned around. Of course, we must exercise caution – the situation can reverse. But the experience of cities and countries that have pushed back this virus give hope and courage to the rest of the world.”

Tedros Adhanom (1965) Director-General of the World Health Organization, former Minister in Ethiopia

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 20 March 2020 https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---20-march-2020, World Health Organization.

Courage , Loss , Time , Success

“And by the way, the virus. They're working hard. Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away. I hope that's true.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Regarding coronavirus

Rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, , quoted in * 2020-02-26

Trump’s dangerous message on coronavirus

Doyle McManus

LA Times

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-02-26/trumps-dangerous-message-on-coronavirus
2020s, 2020, February

Way , Hope

“What is most dangerous is that although this virus will eventually disappear, the assault on our civil liberties is not likely to be reversed. From this point on, whenever local officials, county officials, state governors, or federal bureaucrats decide there is sufficient reason to suspend the Constitution they will not hesitate to do so. Anyone who challenges the suspension of the Constitution “for our own good” will be labeled “unpatriotic” and perhaps even reported to the authorities. We have already seen hotlines springing up across the country for Americans to report other Americans who dare venture outside to enjoy the sun and build up their vitamin D protection against the coronavirus. The government is justified in cancelling the Constitution, we are told, because we are in an emergency situation caused by the Covid-19 virus. But do people forget that the Constitution itself was written and adopted while we were in an “emergency situation”? Did the framers of the Constitution fail to add an 11th Amendment to the Bill of Rights saying, “oh by the way, none of this counts if we get sick?””

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Of course not! Those who wrote our Constitution understood that these rights are not granted by the government, but rather by our Creator. Thus it was never a question as to when or under what conditions they could be suspended: the government had no authority to suspend them at all because it did not grant them in the first place.
2020, End the Shutdown; It’s Time for Resurrection!

Country , Sun , Forgetting , People

“For many millions of Christians, Easter is a time to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Others may celebrate the arrival of spring and the promise of new life. Whatever one’s beliefs, after several weeks of mandatory “stay at home” orders and the complete shutdown of the US economy over the coronavirus, this self-destructive hysteria must end and we must reclaim the freedom and liberty that has provided us so much opportunity as Americans. To do that we should first understand that much of the hysteria is being generated by a mainstream media that has long prioritized sensationalism over investigating and reporting the truth. Government bureaucrats are also exaggerating the threat of this virus and appear to be enjoying the power and control that fearful people are willingly handing over to them. One “coronavirus” bureaucrat even told us that we can no longer go to the grocery store! So we should just starve? It is certainly possible to believe that this virus can be dangerous while at the same time pointing out that radical steps are being taken in our society – stay-at-home orders, introduction of de facto martial law, etc.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

with very little knowledge of just how deadly is this disease.
2020, End the Shutdown; It’s Time for Resurrection!

Life , Home , Time , Understanding

“The coronavirus in SARS or the coronavirus in MERS are in the same family of virus with the new (COVID-19) coronavirus.”

Yuen Kwok-yung (1956) Hong Kong microbiologist, physician and surgeon

Yuen Kwok-yung (2020) cited in " China coronavirus: Hong Kong professor Yuen Kwok-yung says effectiveness of drugs could be judged within weeks, with tests due to start in city https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3048034/china-coronavirus-hong-kong-professor-yuen-kwok" on South China Morning Post, 29 January 2020.

Family

“Normal surgical masks are sufficient to guard against the (COVID-19) virus.”

Chen Shih-chung politician

Chen Shih-chung (2020) cited in " WUHAN VIRUS / Taiwan closes borders to current, former Wuhan residents https://focustaiwan.tw/society/202001230011" on Focus Taiwan, 23 January 2020.

“In general however, those hit by the new (COVID-19) virus are in a less serious condition than with SARS.”

Yazdan Yazdanpanah (1965) French-Iranian infectiologist

Yazdan Yazdanpanah (2020) cited in: " Here's The Science on How Serious The Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak Actually Is https://www.sciencealert.com/how-worried-should-we-be-about-the-wuhan-coronavirus-outbreak" in Science Alert, 29 January 2020.

“This (COVID-19) virus is different from SARS-CoV, which caused severe illness in most infected patients. It appears that many patients have relatively mild illness. These relatively mild cases may recover after one week or so.”

Hitoshi Oshitani (1959) Japanese physician

Hitoshi Oshitani (2020) cited in " China’s health officials say priority is to stop mild coronavirus cases from getting worse https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3048993/chinese-officials-say-priority-stop-mild-coronavirus-cases" on South China Morning Post, 4 February 2020.

Appearance

“Although the new (COVID-19) coronavirus is related to the virus that causes SARS, so far (as of 20 January 2020) it lacks the transmissibility of SARS.”

Yoshihiro Kawaoka (1955) Japanese resercher

Yoshihiro Kawaoka (2020) cited in " New virus surging in Asia rattles scientists https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00129-x" on Nature, 20 January 2020.

Relation ships

“The main reason for this (global emergency) declaration (of COVID-19) is not because of what is happening in China, but because of what is happening in other countries. Our (WHO) greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems.”

Tedros Adhanom (1965) Director-General of the World Health Organization, former Minister in Ethiopia

Tedros Adhanom (2020) cited in "China virus death toll rises to at least 212 as WHO declares global emergency" https://www.thestar.com.my/news/regional/2020/01/31/china-virus-death-toll-rises-to-at-least-212-as-who-declares-global-emergency, The Star Online, 31 January 2020.

Health , Country

“In the last few days the progress of the (COVID-19) virus, especially in some countries, especially human-to-human transmission, worries us (WHO). Although the numbers outside China are still relatively small, they hold the potential for a much larger outbreak.”

Tedros Adhanom (1965) Director-General of the World Health Organization, former Minister in Ethiopia

Tedros Adhanom (2020) cited in "Coronavirus: Death toll rises as virus spreads to every Chinese region" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51305526, BBC News, 30 January 2020.

Country

“The second reason I focus on capitalism is that the responses to today's economic collapse by Trump, the GOP and most Democrats carefully avoid any criticism of capitalism. They all debate the virus, China, foreigners, other politicians, but never the system they all serve. When Trump and others press people to return to churches and jobs—despite risking their and others' lives—they place reviving a collapsed capitalism ahead of public health.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

People , Health

“The problem of policies aimed to return the economy to what it was before the virus hit is this: Global capitalism, by 2019, was itself a major cause of the collapse in 2020. Capitalism's scars from the crashes of 2000 and 2008-2009 had not healed. Years of low interest rates had enabled corporations and governments to "solve" all their problems by borrowing limitlessly at almost zero interest rate cost. All the new money pumped into economies by central banks had indeed caused the feared inflation, but chiefly in stock markets whose prices consequently spiraled dangerously far away from underlying economic values and realities. Inequalities of income and wealth reached historic highs. In short, capitalism had built up vulnerabilities to another crash that any number of possible triggers could unleash. The trigger this time was not the dot.com meltdown of 2000 or the sub-prime meltdown of 2008/9; it was a virus. And of course, mainstream ideology requires focusing on the trigger, not the vulnerability. Thus mainstream policies aim to reestablish pre-virus capitalism. Even if they succeed, that will return us to a capitalist system whose accumulated vulnerabilities will soon again collapse from yet another trigger.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Money , Time , Wealth , Problem

“The desperate policies of panic-driven governments involve throwing huge amounts of money at the economies collapsed in response to the coronavirus threat. Monetary authorities create money and lend it at extremely low interest rates to the major corporations and especially big banks "to get them through the crisis." Government treasuries borrow vast sums to get the collapsed economy back into what they imagine is "the normal, pre-virus economy."”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

Capitalism's leaders are rushing into policy failures because of their ideological blinders.
COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Money , Imagination

“It (travel restriction for the Chinese people due to the 2019-nCoV pandemic) has never been done before, there is no evidence this will do anything by shutting these people in. There is still the virus there.”

Ian Mackay (1922) Australian immunologist

Ian Mackay (2020) cited in: " The U.S. Scientist who Predicted Coronavirus could Kill 65 Million People–Three Months before the Outbreak in Wuhan, China https://electroverse.net/the-u-s-scientist-who-predicted-coronavirus-could-kill-65-million-people/" in Electroverse, 25 January 2020.

Travel , People

“We (France) are going to have patients suspected of having the (2019-nCoV) virus, there are going to be (more) cases.”

Yazdan Yazdanpanah (1965) French-Iranian infectiologist

Yazdan Yazdanpanah (2020) cited in: " French carmaker to evacuate expats from virus-hit Chinese city https://www.theborneopost.com/2020/01/26/french-carmaker-to-evacuate-expats-from-virus-hit-chinese-city/" in Borneo Post Online, 26 January 2020.

“While Malaysians are concerned about the spread of the (2019-nCoV) virus to our shores, we are equally sympathetic towards China, especially given that the two countries share deep cultural and business ties which have been built over decades.”

Teresa Kok (1964) Malaysian politician

Teresa Kok (2020) cited in " Coronavirus: Malaysia to donate 18 million medical gloves to China https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2020/01/31/coronavirus-malaysia-to-donate-18-million-medical-gloves-to-china" on The Star Online, 31 January 2020.

Business , Country