Carl Zimmer · 306 pages
Rating: (4.1K votes)
“Some ancient eukaryote swallowed a photosynthesizing bacteria and became a sunlight gathering alga. Millions of years later one of these algae was devoured by a second eukaryote. This new host gutted the alga, casting away its nucleus and its mitochondria, keeping only the chloroplast. That thief of a thief was the ancestor or Plasmodium and Toxoplasma. And this Russian-doll sequence of events explains why you can cure malaria with an antibiotic that kills bacteria: because Plasmodium has a former bacterium inside it doing some vital business.”
― Carl Zimmer, quote from Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
“Evolution has taught them that pointless harm will ultimately harm themselves.”
― Carl Zimmer, quote from Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
“From Lankaster to Lorenz, scientists have gotten it wrong. Parasites are complex, highly adapted creatures that are at the heart of the story of life. If there hadn't been such high walls dividing scientists who study life - the zoologists, the immunologists, the mathematical biologists, the ecologists - parasites might have been recognized sooner as not disgusting, or at least not merely disgusting. If parasites were so feeble, so lazy, how was it that they could manage to live inside every free-living species and infect billions of people? How could they change with time so that medicines that could once treat them became useless? How could parasites defy vaccines, which could corral brutal killers like smallpox and polio?”
― Carl Zimmer, quote from Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
“parasites make up the majority of species on Earth. According to one estimate, parasites may outnumber free-living species four to one. In other words, the study of life is, for the most part, parasitology. The book in your”
― Carl Zimmer, quote from Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
“It is we who are the parasites, and Earth the host”
― Carl Zimmer, quote from Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
“When Europeans colonized Africa, they helped trigger giant epidemics by forcing people to stay and work in tsetse-infested places. In 1906, Winston Churchill, who was the colonial undersecretary at the time, told the House of Commons that one sleeping sickness epidemic had reduced the population of Uganda from 6.5 million to 2.5 million.”
― Carl Zimmer, quote from Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
Carl Zimmer
Born place: in New Haven, CT, The United States
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“With him, I don’t have to worry about all the other bullshit that’s going on. I don’t have to wonder why I’m not smart enough, or why I’m not good enough. Paul doesn’t care about that stuff. I’m not smart, Matty. I know that. I say dumb stuff sometimes, and most of the time, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t even understand what Paul says half the time, but it doesn’t matter to me because it doesn’t matter to him. I think he likes me just the way I am, and I’ve never had that before. Not really. I don’t have to be anyone else but myself with Paul, and I think that’s okay with him.”
― T.J. Klune, quote from Tell Me It's Real
“Rage filled me at her words - cold, black, unending rage. Whatever happened to me, Mab would not hurt my sister again. She would not.”
― Jennifer Estep, quote from Spider’s Revenge
“Tragedy is an imitation not just of a complete action, but of events that evoke pity and fear.”
― Aristotle, quote from Poetics
“To make the existence and coherent structure of this Universe depend upon automatic activity and upon chance is against all good sense.”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“you’re blessed when you are out of options and all you can do is lean on God. Because when you realize your need for God, it is only then that you tap into His immeasurable greatness and goodness. You’re blessed when you’ve been stripped of that which is most precious to you. Only then can you be tenderly embraced by the One most precious to you.”
― Eric Ludy, quote from When God Writes Your Love Story
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