Contagion Quotes

• I have often noticed how primate groups in their entirety enter a similar mood. All of a sudden, all of them are playful, hopping around. Or all of them are grumpy. Or all of them are sleepy and settle down. In such cases, the mood contagion serves the function of synchronizing activities.

  Frans de Waal

  Groups, Sleepy, Mood

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• Fear and euphoria are dominant forces, and fear is many multiples the size of euphoria. Bubbles go up very slowly as euphoria builds. Then fear hits, and it comes down very sharply. When I started to look at that, I was sort of intellectually shocked. Contagion is the critical phenomenon which causes the thing to fall apart.

  Alan Greenspan

  Fall, Looks, Causes

  "Q&A with Alan Greenspan: ‘Did we make mistakes? You bet’". Interview with Martin Crutsinger, www.seattletimes.com. October 21, 2013.

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• He has outsoared the shadow of our night; envy and calumny and hate and pain, and that unrest which men miscall delight, can touch him not and torture not again; from the contagion of the world's slow stain, he is secure.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Death, Pain, Hate

  'Adonais' (1821) st. 40

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• To demonstrate experimentally that a microscopic organism actually is the cause of a disease and the agent of contagion, I know no other way, in the present state of Science, than to subject the microbe (the new and happy term introduced by M. Sédillot) to the method of cultivation out of the body.

  Louis Pasteur

  Knowledge, Science, Agents

  Hippocrates, Ambroise Paré, William Harvey, Edward Jenner, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1910). “Scientific Papers; Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology”

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• But the world is ever more interdependent. Stock markets and economies rise and fall together. Confidence is the key to prosperity. Insecurity spreads like contagion. So people crave stability and order.

  Tony Blair

  Fall, Keys, Order

  Tony Blair (2004). “Tony Blair in His Own Words”, Politicos Pub

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• A saint addicted to excessive self-abnegation is a dangerous associate; he may infect you with poverty, and a stiffening of those joints which are needed for advancement-in a word, with more renunciation than you care for-and so you flee the contagion.

  Victor Hugo

  Self, Atheism, Advancement

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• The original form is the contagion of fear and alarm. You're in a flock of birds. One bird suddenly takes off. You have no time to wait and see what's going on. You take off, too. Otherwise, you're lunch.

  Frans de Waal

  Lunch, Bird, Waiting

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• Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.

  Thornton Wilder

  Funny, Ninety Nine, People

  1954 The Matchmaker, act 1.

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• He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.

  Thomas Paine

  Motivation, War, Government

  Thomas Paine (2016). “THE AMERICAN CRISIS – Revolutionary Work Which Inspired the American People to Fight for Their Independence: Including “The Life of Thomas Paine” – Extensive Biography of the Author”, p.58, e-artnow

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• Tranquillity is contagious, peace is contagious. One only thinks of the contagiousness of illness, but there is the contagion of serenity and joy.

  Anais Nin

  Happiness, Thinking, Joy

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• Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world.

  William Shakespeare

  Halloween, Night, Denmark In Hamlet

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 3, sc. 2, l. [413]

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• To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind; and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by the consciousness of dignity of benefaction.

  Samuel Johnson

  Hands, Mind, Guilt

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.47

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• If only people would realize that moral principles are like measles.... They have to be caught. And only the people who've got them can pass on the contagion.

  Aldous Huxley

  People, Principles, Moral

  Aldous Huxley (1953). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

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• Contagion has become very much a phenomenon, and it's a phenomenon of globalization.

  Lawrence Summers

  Globalization, Phenomenon

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• Even papists could not see that a moral evil was detained in the soul through its physical connection with the body; and that it required the dissolution of this physical connection before the moral contagion could be removed.

  Adam Clarke

  Evil, Soul, Connections

  Adam Clarke (1842). “Christian Theology”, p.185

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• Of all the problems which were open to me for study, typhus was the most urgent and the most unexplored. We knew nothing of the way in which contagion spread

  Jules Henry

  Way, Study, Problem

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• As contagion of sickness makes sickness, contagion of trust can make trust.

  Marianne Moore

  Trust, Sickness

  Marianne Moore (1994). “Complete Poems”, p.136, Penguin

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• Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated by contagion.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Communication, Crowds, Pure

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• The newspaperman has become a walking plague. He spreads the contagion of lies and calumnies.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Lying, Journalism, Calumny

  Mahatma Gandhi, U. R. Rao (1963). “The Way to Communal Harmony”, Ahmedabad, [India] : Navajivan Publishing House

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• If kind parents love their children and delight in their happiness, then he who is perfect goodness in sending abroad mortal contagions doth assuredly direct their use.

  John Woolman

  Love, Happiness, Children

  Benjamin Franklin, John Woolman (2010). “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, the Journal of John Woolman, Fruits of Solitude by William Penn”, p.207, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.

  John Milton

  Sheep, Looks, Hungry

  'Lycidas' (1638) l. 123

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• As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left us in a bad time.

  E. B. White

  Hope, Time, Women

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.126, Cornell University Press

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• A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it, and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. All things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out must be part of the original frame of the universe, and of such valor as God himself.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Winter, Wind, Mountain

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1007, Delphi Classics

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• Only one form of contagion travels faster than a virus. And that's fear.

  Dan Brown

  Viruses, Form, Faster

  Dan Brown (2014). “Inferno: Special Illustrated Edition (Enhanced): Featuring Robert Langdon”, p.729, Knopf

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• A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within.

  Ann Radcliffe

  Thinking, Errors, Ideas

  Ann Radcliffe (1795). “The Mysteries of Udolfo: A Romance Interspersed with Some Pieces of Poetry”, p.15

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