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Quotes About Microbes

Epidemics stop only when the microbes get disgusted with their toxins.
~ Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Given the War on Bacteria so culturally prominent in our time, the well-being of our microbial ecology requires regular replenishment and diversification now more than ever.
~ Sandor Ellix Katz
General Fatigue stalked in, & a Major-General, Captain Fatigue, and at the base of all pale Corporal Fatigue, and curious microbes came, came viruses: and the Court conferred on Henry, and conferred on Henry the rare Order of Weak.
~ John Berryman
Microbes make up 80 percent of all biomass, says microbiologist Carl Woese. In one-fifth of a teaspoon of seawater, there are a million bacteria (and 10 million viruses), Craig Venter says, adding, "If you don't like bacteria, you're on the wrong planet. This is the planet of the bacteria
~ John Brockman
The story emerging from these studies is not yet complete, but it has already led to fascinating insights. Thanks to its microbes, a baby can better digest its mother's milk. And your ability to digest carbohydrates relies to a significant extent on enzymes that can be made only by genes present not in you but in your microbiome.
~ John Brockman
Scientists have theorized that when Earth comes to its final days, the only life left on the planet would be in the form of microbes.
~ Brad Steiger
If there is life, then I believe we should do nothing to disturb that life. Mars then, belongs to the Martians, even if they are microbes.
~ Carl Sagan
In the womb, humans are free of microbes. Colonization begins during the journey down the birth canal, which is riddled with bacteria, some of which make their way onto the newborn's skin.
~ Robin Marantz Henig
We inherit every one of our genes, but we leave the womb without a single microbe. As we pass through our mother's birth canal, we begin to attract entire colonies of bacteria. By the time a child can crawl, he has been blanketed by an enormous, unseen cloud of microorganisms - a hundred trillion or more.
~ Michael Specter
For theories and schools, like microbes and corpuscles, devour one another and by their strife ensure the continuity of life.
~ Marcel Proust
If you don't expose something to sunlight, microbes and germs will thrive.
~ Grace Poe
Being a tree, affirmation would feel different. Love would feel different. We would be happiest if our soil was full of microbes chatting. We would be happiest if the soil was rich enough to contain a complex fungal network that would allow us to sort of blur into it and talk to or just sort of be each other.
~ Sam Cohen
Microbes. Bacteria. Worms underground that mingle our parts with everything. It's generous." He locks his fingers in hers. "And infinite." Mr. Bell squares his face to hers. "If you can get over the dreaded finite.
~ Samantha Hunt
What do you think?" "No way. Dirt to dirt. One Life to Live." Ruth winces. "Why? What's wrong with that?" he asks. "Microbes. Bacteria. Worms underground that mingle our parts with everything. It's generous." He locks his fingers in hers. "And infinite." Mr. Bell squares his face to hers. "If you can get over the dreaded finite.
~ Samantha Hunt
In addition to single-gene genetic disorders, there are just five causes of all disease: poor diet, chronic stress, microbes, toxins, and allergens, all of which wash over our DNA causing changes in our gene expression, and turning off or on different genes and messages that affect our metabolism.
~ Mark Hyman
And do you know what the Americans and the Russians make their atoms with? They make them with the microbes of god. - You are raving, Mr Artaud. You are mad. - I am not raving. I am not mad. I'm telling you that microbes have been reinvented in order to impose a new idea of god.
~ Antonin Artaud
Although there exist in the world today some microbes of the soul, such as discrimination and aggression, science was and still is the core of progress for humanity and the continuity of civilization.
~ Ahmed Zewail
Now microbes seem to have an enormous mutation rate (or some other method of hereditary adaptation), for, within a few years, they have evolved new drug-resistant strains. We humans cannot perform such evolutionary feats. But we can simulate major adaptive mutations by adding iodine to the drinking water, or by putting drops into the eyes of the newborn, to protect them from enemies against which our natural defences are inadequate.
~ Arthur Koestler
Flakes of snow swirled and danced across the porch. The Overlook faced it as it had for nearly three-quarters of a century, its darkened windows now bearded with snow, indifferent to the fact it was now cut off from the world… Inside its shell the three of them went about their early evening routine, like microbes trapped in the intestine of a monster.
~ Stephen King
Louis Pasteur once noted, "The microbes always have the last word.
~ Jonathan D. Quick
The emotion of disgust evolved initially to optimize responses to the omnivore's dilemma. Individuals who had a properly calibrated sense of disgust were able to consume more calories than their overly disgustable cousins while consuming fewer dangerous microbes than their insufficiently disgustable cousins.
~ Jonathan Haidt
A nationwide study published by the USDA in 1996 found that [...] 78.6 percent of the ground beef contained microbes that are spread primarily by fecal matter. The medical literature on the causes of food poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms: coliform levels, aerobic plate counts, sorbitol, MacConkey agar, and so on. Behind them lies a simple explanation for why eating hamburger meat makes you sick: There is shit in the meat.
~ Eric Schlosser
Inequality among siblings goes all the way to the gut: we are born with different microbes inside us, outnumbering our cells ten to one. Some of them affect our chances of becoming obese in later life and others affect how well we digest our dinner. What we eat is constantly changing the composition of our microbiota, but, equally, the nature of the microbes inside us determines how well we respond to the food we eat.
~ Bee Wilson
Antibiotics are a very serious public health problem for us, and it's getting worse. Resistant microbes outstrip new antibiotics. It's an ongoing problem. It's not like we can fix it, and it's over. We have to fight continued resistance with a continual pipeline of new antibiotics and continue with the perpetual challenge.
~ Anthony Fauci