Archive

Quotes

Diseases are not immutable entities but dynamic social constructions that have biographies of their own.

—Robert P. Hudson, 1983

’Tis the destroyer, or the devil, that scatters plagues about the world.

—Cotton Mather, 1693

The beginning of health lies in knowing the disease.

—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615

If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare.

—George W. Bush, 2005

How sickness enlarges the dimension of a man’s self to himself! He is his own exclusive object.

—Charles Lamb, 1833

Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness.

—Susan Sontag, 1963

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

—Bian Qiao, c. 500 BC

The sick man is the parasite of society.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889

It is strange indeed that the more we learn about how to build health, the less healthy Americans become.

—Adelle Davis, 1951

The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease.

—Marianne Moore, 1935

The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

—Agnes Repplier, 1929

If they prescribe a lot of remedies for some sickness or other, it means that the sickness is incurable.

—Anton Chekhov, 1904

Diseases, at least many of them, are like human beings. They are born, they flourish, and they die.

—David Riesman, 1937