Archive

Quotes

’Tis a portentous sign / When a man sweats and at the same time shivers.

—Plautus, c. 180 BC

What timid man does not avoid contact with the sick, fearing lest he contract a disease so near?

—Ovid, c. 10

The sick man is the parasite of society.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1889

In times of pestilence, gaiety and joyousness are most profitable.

—Jacme d’Agramont, 1348

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

—George W. Bush, 2005

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

—Susan Sontag, 1963

Everyone who is sick is someone else’s patient zero.

—Leslie Jamison, 2020

Disease is not of the body but of the place.

—Latin proverb

We should always presume the disease to be curable until its own nature proves it otherwise.

—Peter Mere Latham, c. 1845

The beginning of health lies in knowing the disease.

—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615

Health in all lands is among the indispensable guarantees of human progress.

—Helen Keller, 1936

Health care delivery is one of the tragedies still in America.

—Jewel Plummer Cobb, 1989

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

—Bian Qiao, c. 500 BC