Smallpox Quotes

• I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.

  Woody Allen

  Love, Heartbreak, Kissing

  "Annie Hall". Comedy, Romance, 1977.

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• Smallpox was the worst disease in history. It killed more people than all the wars in history.

  Larry Brilliant

  War, People, Disease

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• At present, intelligent people do not have their children vaccinated, nor does the law now compel them to. The result is not, as the Jennerians prophesied, the extermination of the human race by smallpox; on the contrary more people are now killed by vaccination than by smallpox.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Children, Intelligent, Race

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• I hope that some day the practice of producing cowpox in human beings will spread over the world - when that day comes, there will be no more smallpox.

  Edward Jenner

  Practice, World, Spread

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• Infectious diseases introduced with Europeans, like smallpox and measles, spread from one Indian tribe to another, far in advance of Europeans themselves, and killed an estimated 95% of the New World's Indian population.

  Jared Diamond

  Literature, World, Disease

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• Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Birthday, Age, Today

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• Benjamin Franklin refused to have one of his children vaccinated against smallpox. The four-year-old boy died, and Franklin wrote later of how mistaken he was to expose him to the needless risk.

  Michael Specter

  Children, Boys, Years

  Source: www.newyorker.com

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• My general theory since 1971 has been that the word is literally a virus, and that it has not been recognized as such because it has achieved a state of relatively stable symbiosis with its human host; that is to say, the word virus (the other Half) has established itself so firmly as an accepted part of the human organism that it can now sneer at gangster viruses like smallpox and turn them in to the Pasteur Institute.

  William S. Burroughs

  Past, Viruses, Half

  William S. Burroughs (2013). “The Adding Machine”, p.59, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• In 1980 we declared the globe free of smallpox. It was the largest campaign in United Nations history until the Iraq war. A hundred and fifty thousand people from all over the world, doctors of every race, religion, culture and nation, who fought side by side, brothers and sisters, with each other, not against each other, in a common cause to make the world better.

  Larry Brilliant

  Brother, War, Doctors

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• Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.

  William S. Burroughs

  Business, Mind, Atheism

  William S. Burroughs (1993). “The Adding Machine: Selected Essays”, p.16, Arcade Publishing

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• We have completely eradicated smallpox; we have almost eradicated polio. That's the miracle of vaccines, which is even greater than that of antibiotics.

  Bill Gates

  Vaccines, Miracle, Antibiotics

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Measles and TB evolved from diseases of our cattle, influenza from a disease of pigs, and smallpox possibly from a disease of camels. The Americas had very few native domesticated animal species from which humans could acquire such diseases.

  Jared Diamond

  Animal, Pigs, Camels

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• Because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.

  John Green

  Death, Cancer, Honor

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.217, Penguin

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• While the vaccine discovery was progressive, the joy I felt at the prospect before me of being the instrument destined to take away from the world one of its greatest calamities [smallpox], blended with the fond hope of enjoying independence and domestic peace and happiness, was often so excessive that, in pursuing my favourite subject among the meadows, I have sometimes found myself in a kind of reverie.

  Edward Jenner

  Science, Discovery, Vaccines

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• A child who had been introduced to misery in Saudi Arabia, a teenager who went to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, a deeply devout Muslim who had graduated with honors in medicine, a man who had fed a stranger to wild dogs in Damascus, a zealot who had dosed three foreigners with smallpox and watched them die in agony, gave thanks to Allah for the blessings that had been bestowed upon him.

  Terry Hayes

  Dog, Children, Teenager

  Terry Hayes (2014). “I Am Pilgrim: A Thriller”, p.355, Simon and Schuster

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• The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.

  John Green

  Real, Hero, Vaccines

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.177, Penguin

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• The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.

  John Green

  Inspirational, Real, Hero

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.177, Penguin

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• I would not go so far as to say that vaccination has never saved a person from smallpox. It is a matter of record that thousands of the victims of this superstitious rite have been saved from smallpox by the immunizing potency of death. But it is a fact that the official statistics of England and Wales show unmistakably that, while vaccination has killed ten times more people than smallpox, there has been a decrease in smallpox concomitant with the decrease in vaccination. . . It might be appropriately asked, in the words of the Vaccination Inquirer

  Herbert M. Shelton

  Vaccines, People, Records

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• If there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples. - Japanese Proverb

  Stephen King

  Dimples, Scar, Japanese Proverbs

  Stephen King (2016). “11/22/63: A Novel”, p.9, Simon and Schuster

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• Then we should find some artificial inoculation against love, as with smallpox.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Should, Artificial, Against Love

  Leo Tolstoy (2006). “Anna Karenina”, p.220, Penguin UK

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• He who controls the past controls the future.

  Laozi

  Future, Past, Political Language

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• They ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Ought

  Leo Tolstoy (2016). “Anna Karenina (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.119, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

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• Faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.

  Richard Dawkins

  Mad Cow Disease, Evil, Religion

  "Is Science a Religion?". Humanist, www.skeptical-science.com. January/February 1997.

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• Nobody spends any money on smallpox unless they worry about a bio-terrorist recreating it.

  Bill Gates

  Worry, Disease, Bios

  "Bill Gates: ‘Death is something we really understand extremely well’". Interview with Ezra Klein, www.washingtonpost.com. May 17, 2013.

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• I do think the Roman Catholic religion is a disease of the mind which has a particular epidemiology similar to that of a virus... Religion is a terrific meme. That's right. But that doesn't make it true and I care about what's true. Smallpox virus is a terrific virus. It does its job magnificently well. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing. It doesn't mean that I don't want to see it stamped out.

  Richard Dawkins

  Jobs, Mean, Thinking

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