René Dubos Quotes

33 Sourced Quotes

It is seldom recognized that each type of society has diseases peculiar to itself — indeed, that each civilization creates its own diseases.

René Dubos
Adaptability is an asset for biological survival, but paradoxically, the greatest threat to the quality of human life is that the human species is so immensely adaptable that it can survive even under the most objectionable conditions.

René Dubos
Despite all the new powers of science, or perhaps because of them, man is no longer able to achieve real mastery over his environment.

René Dubos
Life is known only through its outward manifestations in either organism, or as a personal experience.

René Dubos
Reason dreams of an empire of knowledge, a mansion of the mind. Yet sometimes we end up living in a hotel by its side.

René Dubos
The experiment serves two purposes, often independent one from the other: it allows the observation of new facts, hitherto either unsuspected, or not yet well defined; and it determines whether a working hypothesis fits the world of observable facts.

René Dubos
Nature does not know how to deal with situations that have no precedents in the evolutionary past.

René Dubos
There are no harmless chemicals, only harmless use of chemicals.

René Dubos
Scientists, like artists, unavoidably reflect the characteristics of the civilization and the time in which they live. In this sense, they are "enchained"...by the inexorable logic of their time and their work.

René Dubos
Biologically, man is still the great amateur of the animal kingdom; he is unique in his lack of anatomical and physiological specialization.

René Dubos
History is replete with anecdotes and bons mots relating to statesmen, soldiers, artists, philosophers, and most other types of notables; but even a well-informed man finds it difficult to enliven talk with quotations from scientists.

René Dubos
The difficulty of defining disease is implied in the very structure of the word: "dis-ease." So many different kinds of disturbances can make a person feel not at ease and lead him to seek the aid of a physician that the word ought to encompass most of the difficulties inherent in the human condition.

René Dubos
Both the myths of religion and the laws of science, it is now becoming apparent, are not so much descriptions of facts as symbolic expressions of cosmic truths.

René Dubos
Complete and lasting freedom from disease is but a dream remembered from imaginings of a Garden of Eden designed for the welfare of man.

René Dubos
Almost universally, man tries to eliminate the unpleasant effects of environmental forces instead of making the greater effort required to cope with them through his own adaptive physiological resources.

René Dubos
Religion and science... constitute deep-rooted and ancient efforts to find richer experience and deeper meaning than are found in the ordinary biological and social satisfactions. As pointed out by Whitehead, religion and science have similar origins and are evolving toward similar goals.

René Dubos
Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.

René Dubos
Every decision is like a murder, and our march forward is over the stillborn bodies of all our possible selves that we'll never be.

René Dubos
Directly or indirectly, the various forms of art reflect the strivings, the struggles, and the sufferings of mankind. The state of health and the ills of a society are recorded not only in the writings of its physicians and scholars but also in the themes and moods of its artists and poets.

René Dubos
Most enlightened persons now accept as a fact that everything in the cosmos — from heavenly bodies to human beings — has developed and continues to develop through evolutionary processes.

René Dubos
A scientific paper should never try to make more than one point.

René Dubos
DDT went further toward the eradication of malariologists than of mosquitoes.

René Dubos
Man has now succeeded in humanizing most of the earth's surface but paradoxically, he is developing simultaneously a cult for wilderness. After having been for so long frightened by the primeval forest, he has come to realize that its eerie light evokes in him a mood of wonder that cannot be experienced in an orchard or a garden.

René Dubos
The incredible beauty of the earth as seen from space results largely from the fact that our planet is covered with living things. What gives vibrant colors and exciting variety to the surface of the earth is the fact that it is literally a living organism.

René Dubos
Science is not the product of lofty meditations and genteel behavior, it is fertilized by heartbreaking toil and long vigils — even if, only too often, those who harvest the fruit are but the laborers of the eleventh hour.

René Dubos
The total effect of the environmental crisis cannot be evaluated because it is spread throughout the whole social structure.

René Dubos
Science is still the versatile, unpredictable hero of the play, creating endless new situations, opening romantic vistas and challenging accepted concepts.

René Dubos
If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.

René Dubos
Each cell, each living being has a multipotential biochemical personality but the physiochemical environment determines the one under which it manifests itself.

René Dubos
Like other men, scientists become deaf and blind to any argument or evidence that does not fit into the thought pattern which circumstances have led them to follow.

René Dubos