Plague Quotes

• What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Evil, World

  Albert Camus (1960). “The plague: translated from the French”

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• Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind.

  William Shakespeare

  Blind, Madmen

  William Shakespeare, Jay L. Halio (2005). “The Tragedy of King Lear”, p.207, Cambridge University Press

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• …there's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is - common decency.

  Albert Camus

  Mean, Fighting, Common Decency

  Albert Camus (1960). “The plague: translated from the French”

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• Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

  William Safire

  Lasts, Cliche, Superlatives

  William Safire (1991). “Fumblerules: a lighthearted guide to grammar and good usage”, Laurel

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• It's coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It's not just climate change; it's sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.

  David Attenborough

  Home, Years, Space

  "Humans are plague on Earth". www.telegraph.co.uk. January 22, 2013.

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• There are plagues, and there are victims, and it's the duty of good men not to join forces with the plagues.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Good Man, Goodness

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• No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and emotions shared by all.

  Albert Camus

  Destiny, Emotion, Individual

  Albert Camus (1960). “The plague: translated from the French”

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• But what does it mean, the plague? It's life, that's all.

  Albert Camus

  Mean, Doe

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• I have lived to see the greatest plague on earth -- the condemning of God's word, a fearful thing, surpassing all other plagues in the world; for thereupon most surely follow all manner of punishments, eternal and corporal.

  Martin Luther

  Punishment, World, Earth

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• The plague of racism is insidious, entering into our minds as smoothly and quietly and invisibly as floating airborne microbes enter into our bodies to find lifelong purchase in our bloodstreams.

  Maya Angelou

  Justice, Diversity, Racism

  Maya Angelou (2011). “Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now”, p.57, Bantam

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• War is the greatest plague that can afflict mankind... Any scourge is preferable to it.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Military, War, Mankind

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• And now, my friends, a dragon's toast! Here's to life's little blessings: war, plagues, and all forms of evil. Their presence keeps us alert--- and their absence keeps us grateful.

  T.A. Barron

  War, Grateful, Blessing

  T. A. Barron (2011). “The Dragon of Avalon”, p.220, Penguin

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• Plague has hung over human history. The biggest human extinction was after 1492 in North and South America when the mortality rate was 95 per cent, which is enormous. But again, I'm actually giving you grounds for optimism: There were enough to continue. The five per cent who made it through are what you need to survive a bottleneck, which we have been through before.

  Margaret Atwood

  America, Giving, Optimism

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.

  David Graeber

  Suicidal, Energy, Viruses

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• Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ("The Plague")

  Albert Camus

  Men, Two, Ministry

  Albert Camus (1960). “The plague: translated from the French”

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• Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.

  Michael Crichton

  Animal, Thinking, World

  Michael Crichton (1997). “Michael Crichton's Jurassic World”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• The Peloponnesian War turns out to be no dry chronicle of abstract cause and effect. No, it is above all an intense, riveting, and timeless story of strong and weak men, of heroes and scoundrels and innocents too, all caught in the fateful circumstances of rebellion, plague, and war that always strip away the veneer of culture and show us for what we really are.

  Thucydides

  Strong, War, Hero

  Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert B. Strassler (2008). “The Landmark Thucydides”, p.23, Simon and Schuster

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• False fears are a plague, a modern plague!

  Michael Crichton

  Sociology, Modern

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• Impatience turns an ague into a fever, a fever to the plague, fear into despair, anger into rage, loss into madness, and sorrow to amazement.

  Jeremy Taylor

  Loss, Sorrow, Despair

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• We must understand the role of human rights as empowering of individuals and communities. By protecting these rights, we can help prevent the many conflicts based on poverty, discrimination and exclusion (social, economic and political) that continue to plague humanity and destroy decades of development efforts. The vicious circle of human rights violations that lead to conflicts-which in turn lead to more violations-must be broken. I believe we can break it only by ensuring respect for all human rights.

  Mary Robinson

  Believe, Rights, Circles

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• As the medieval mind blamed God for human suffering, so the modern mind blames 'the system' for the industrial blight and plague of technology.

  Jennifer Stone

  Technology, Mind, Suffering

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• Both of us victims of the same twentieth-century plague. Not the Black Death, this time; the Gray Life.

  Aldous Huxley

  Black, Victim, Century

  Aldous Huxley (2009). “Island”, p.69, Random House

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• Occasionally they came to villages, and at each village they encountered a roadblock of fallen trees. Having had centuries of experience with the smallpox virus, the village elders had instituted their own methods for controlling the virus, according to their received wisdom, which was to cut their villages off from the world, to protect their people from a raging plague. It was reverse quarantine, an ancient practice in Africa, where a village bars itself from strangers during a time of disease, and drives away outsiders who appear. (94)

  Richard Preston

  Cutting, Practice, People

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• It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence.

  Albert Camus

  Silence, Calamity, Hardened

  ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

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• A revolution is interesting insofar as it avoids like the plague the plague it promised to heal.

  Daniel Berrigan

  Interesting, Revolution, Heal

  Lee Lockwood, Daniel Berrigan (1972). “Daniel Berrigan: Absurd Convictions, Modest Hopes: Conversations After Prison with Lee Lockwood”, New York : Random House

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