Bacteria Quotes - Page 3

When antibiotics became industrially produced following World War II, our quality of life and our longevity improved enormously. No one thought bacteria were going to become resistant.

Bonnie Bassler

War, Quality, Antibiotics

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But however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, Protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, and bedbugs will always lurk in the shadows ready to pounce when neglect, poverty, famine, or war lets down the defenses.

Hans Zinsser

War, Civilization, Shadow

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What we want is another sample of life, which is not on our tree of life at all. All life that we've studied so far on Earth belongs to the same tree. We share genes with mushrooms and oak trees and fish and bacteria that live in volcanic vents and so on that it's all the same life descended from a common origin. What we want is a second tree of life. We want alien life, alien not necessarily in the sense of having come from space, but alien in the sense of belonging to a different tree altogether. That is what we're looking for, "life 2.0."

Paul Davies

Mushrooms, Space, Tree

Source: bigthink.com

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...no matter how complex or affluent, human societies are nothing but subsystems of the biosphere, the Earth's thin veneer of life, which is ultimately run by bacteria, fungi and green plants.

Vaclav Smil

Running, Nature, Green Plants

Vaclav Smil (2005). “Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties”, p.350, MIT Press

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It's also hard for people to contend with the difficult possibility that we are simply overadvanced fungi and bacteria hurtling through a galaxy in cold, meaningless space. But just because our existence may have arisen unintentionally and without purpose doesn't preclude meaning or purpose from emerging as a result of our interaction and collaboration. Meaning may not be a precondition for humanity as much as a by-product of it.

Douglas Rushkoff

Space, People, Humanity

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We travel because, no matter how comfortable we are at home, there's a part of us that wants - that needs - to see new vistas, take new tours, obtain new entrees, introduce new bacteria into our intestinal tracts, learn new words for "transfusion," and have all the other travel adventures that make us want to French-kiss our doormats when we finally get home.

Dave Barry

Adventure, Home, Kissing

"Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need". Book by Dave Barry, 1991.

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No one can practice the precepts perfectly, including the Buddha... Boiled vegetables contain dead bacteria. We cannot practice the First Precept or any of the precepts perfectly. But because of the real danger in our society-alcoholism has destroyed so many families and has brought about much unhappiness-we have to do something. We have to live in a way that will eradicate that kind of damage. That is why even if you can be very healthy with one glass of wine every week, I still urge you with all my strength to abandon that glass of wine.

Nhat Hanh

Real, Wine, Glasses

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Most educated people are aware that we are the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun’s demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.

Martin Rees

Science, Thinking, Years

"The Catastrophist" by Christopher Hitchens, www.theatlantic.com. January 2010.

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It has been demonstrated that a species of penicillium produces in culture a very powerful antibacterial substance which affects different bacteria in different degrees. Generally speaking it may be said that the least sensitive bacteria are the Gram-negative bacilli, and the most susceptible are the pyogenic cocci ... In addition to its possible use in the treatment of bacterial infections penicillin is certainly useful... for its power of inhibiting unwanted microbes in bacterial cultures so that penicillin insensitive bacteria can readily be isolated.

Alexander Fleming

Powerful, Degrees, Negative

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Since the universe must contain millions of appropriate planets, consciousness in some form - but not with the paired eyes and limbs, and the brain built of neurons in the only example we know - may evolve frequently. But if only one origin of life in a million ever leads to consciousness, then Martian bacteria most emphatically do not imply Little Green Men.

Stephen Jay Gould

Eye, Men, Origin Of Life

Stephen Jay Gould (1999). “Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms: Essays on Natural History”, Three Rivers Press (CA)

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When I write "paradise" I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes - disease and death and the rotting of flesh.

Edward Abbey

Mean, Writing, Disease And Death

"Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness". Book by Edward Abbey ("Down the River", p. 147), 1968.

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Twentieth-century developments in science support a new animism. Developments in physics have led to a world of energetic events which seem to be self-moving and to behave in unpredictable ways. And recent studies in biology seem to demonstrate that bacteria and macromolecules have elemental forms of perception, memory, choice, and self-motion.

David Ray Griffin

Memories, Moving, Self

David Ray Griffin (1989). “God and Religion in the Postmodern World: Essays in Postmodern Theology”, p.88, SUNY Press

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Since we're living with antibiotic drugs and chlorinated water and antibacterial soap and all these factors in our contemporary lives that I'd group together as a 'war on bacteria,' if we fail to replenish [good bacteria], we won't effectively get nutrients out of the food we're eating.

Sandor Katz

War, Water, Drug

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Plants with leaves no more efficient than today's solar cells could out-compete real plants, crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage. Tough omnivorous bacteria could out-compete real bacteria: They could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days. Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough, small, and rapidly spreading to stop - at least if we make no preparation. We have trouble enough controlling viruses and fruit flies.

K. Eric Drexler

Real, Cells, Dust

K. Eric Drexler (1986). “Engines of creation”, Anchor Books

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From dead plant matter to nematodes to bacteria, never underestimate the cleverness of mushrooms to find new food!

Paul Stamets

Mushrooms, Matter, Underestimate

"The Mighty Oyster Mushroom: The Workhorse of Gourmet Fungi" by Paul Stamets, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 25, 2013.

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Teeth represent only 10 percent of the surface of your mouth and bacteria live throughout the whole mouth. When you stop brushing, bacteria left behind resettle on your teeth and gums. Oil pulling reaches virtually 100 percent of the mouth, thereby affecting all bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa in the mouth.

Bruce Fife

Oil, Teeth, Viruses

Bruce Fife (2017). “Oil Pulling Therapy: Detoxifying and Healing the Body Through Oral Cleansing”, p.89, Piccadilly Books, Ltd.

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The oil acts like a cleanser. When you put it in your mouth and work it around your teeth and gums it 'pulls' out bacteria and other debris.

Bruce Fife

Oil, Teeth, Gum

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We all have weak moments, moments where we lose faith, but it's our flaws, our weaknesses that make us human. Science now performs miracles like the gods of old, creating life from blood cells or bacteria, or a spark of metal. But they're perfect creatures and in that way they couldn't be less human. There are things machines will never do, they cannot possess faith, they cannot commune with God. They cannot appreciate beauty, they cannot create art. If they ever learn these things, they won't have to destroy us, they'll be us.

Sarah Connor

Art, Appreciate Beauty, Creating Life

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At the bottom of the ocean, bacteria that are thermophilic and can survive at the steam vent heat that would otherwise produce, if fish were there, sous-vide cooked fish, nevertheless, have managed to make that a hospitable environment for them.

Harvey V. Fineberg

Ocean, Heat, Environment

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My mitochondria comprise a very large proportion of me. I cannot do the calculation, but I suppose there is almost as much of them in sheer dry bulk as there is the rest of me. Looked at in this way, I could be taken for a very large, motile colony of respiring bacteria, operating a complex system of nuclei, microtubules, and neurons for the pleasure and sustenance of their families, and running, at the moment, a typewriter.

Lewis Thomas

Running, Taken, Typewriters

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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I expect that essential oils may some day prove a vital weapon in the fight against strains of antibiotic-resi stant bacteria.

Andrew Weil

Fighting, Essential Oils, Essentials

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They all have in common that they are bacteria caused by bowel and feces.

Kennedy

Common

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Nature is flexible and resilient. Nature likes redundancy and dispersion. It is approximate and deals in gradients. All boundaries are permeable. Nature nests small systems like molecules within larger systems like cells, which in turn are nested in systems called organs, organisms, ecosystems. We grew from ancient one-celled ancestors. Nature likes mergers: we contain multitudes of other life forms within us. We stand at the crest of four billion years, bacteria molded into wondrous form, burning with a slow fire and about to take the next step.

Robert Frenay

Nature, Ecosystems, Fire

Robert Frenay (2006). “Pulse: The Coming Age of Systems and Machines Inspired by Living Things”, p.32, Macmillan

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If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the universe.

Christian de Duve

Cells, Games, Atoms

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A species may eat a particular bacterium, phytoplankton, smaller fish, or plant in an area. Lacking a predator, these species/populations will overgrow and alter the area's biology, overwhelming and driving to extinction dozens or hundreds or thousands of other local species.

Thom Hartmann

Environmental, Population, Dozen

"Threshold: The Progressive Plan to Pull America Back from the Brink". Book by Thom Hartmann, p.22, mindprod.com. July 23, 2009.

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