Men are naturally most impressed by diseases which have obvious manifestations, yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively.
Interpretation
People tend to fear and notice obvious problems, while the more subtle issues can be much more harmful.
Rene Dubos highlights a critical aspect of human nature: we often react strongly to visible threats, such as diseases with clear symptoms, while ignoring or underestimating stealthy dangers that may be more damaging in the long run. This quote encourages awareness of less obvious challenges that can undermine our well-being.
In practice
In a speech about public health, one might say, 'As Rene Dubos pointed out, we should not just focus on diseases that are visible but also recognize those that creep up quietly.'
The wooing of the Earth thus implies much more than converting the wilderness into humanized environments. It means also preserving natural environments in which to experience mysteries transcending daily life and from which to recapture, in a Proustian kind of remembrance, the awareness of the cosmic forces that have shaped humankind.
Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.
There is a demon in technology. It was put there by man and man will have to exorcise it before technological civilization can achieve the eighteenth-century ideal of humane civilized life.
Nature always strikes back. It takes all the running we can do to remain in the same place.
We have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. The Man of Science, the Chemist and Mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have had to struggle with, know and feel this. However painful may be the objects with which the Anatomist's knowledge is connected, he feels that his knowledge is pleasure; and where he has no pleasure he has no knowledge.
The recognition of the law of the cause and effect, also known as karma, is a fundamental key to understand how you've created your world, with actions of your body, speech and mind. When you truly understand karma, then you realize you are responsible for everything in your life. It is incredibly empowering to know that your future is in your hands.
Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.
New York is something awful, something monstrous. I like to walk the streets, lost, but I recognize that New York is the world's greatest lie. New York is Senegal with machines.
The essence of the question is the opening up, and keeping open, of possibilities.
We are all members of the same flawed species. Putting our moral vision into practice means imposing our will on others. The human lust for power and esteem, coupled with its vulnerability to self-deception and self-righteousness, makes that an invitation to a calamity, all the worse when the power is directed at a goal as quixotic as eradicating human self-interest.
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