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
See more on GoodReads
“Release the demon under promise that I'd be repaid handsomely, my enemies destroyed? Hmm, where had I seen this before? Oh, right. Every demon horror movie ever made. And the horror part started right after the releasing part.”
― Kelley Armstrong, quote from The Awakening
“The beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
― Allen Ginsberg, quote from Howl and Other Poems
“Taking no chances means wasting your dreams..”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Crank
“Man has no moral instinct. He is not born with moral sense. You were not born with it, I was not - and a puppy has none. We acquire moral sense, when we do, through training, experience, and hard sweat of the mind.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Starship Troopers
“—¿”Rubí”? —repetí yo.
—Sí —dijo mamá—. Cada uno de los doce viajeros del tiempo está relacionado con una piedra preciosa. Y tú eres rubí.
—¿De dónde has sacado eso?
—«Ópalo y Ámbar forman el primer par, Ágata canta en si, del loba el avatar, dueto —¡Solutio!— con Aguamarina. Siguen poderosas la Esmeralda y la Citrina, los gemelos Cornalina en Escorpión, y Jade, el número ocho, digestión. En mi mayor: negra Turmalina, Zafiro en fa se ilumina. Y casi al mismo tiempo el Diamante, once y siete, del León rampante. ¡Projectio llega! Fluye el tiempo, y Rubí constituye el final y el comienzo». —Mamá me miró con una sonrisa más bien triste—. Aún me lo sé de memoria.
Por alguna razón, durante su recitado, se me había puesto la carne de gallina. Sus palabras no me habían parecido tanto una poesía como un conjuro, algo que las brujas malvadas murmuraban en las películas mientras dan vueltas con una cuchara a una olla llena de vapores verdosos.
—¿Qué se supone que significa?”
― Kerstin Gier, quote from Ruby Red
The Crown Conspiracy
The Sea, the Sea
The Ballad of the Sa...
Memoirs of a Teenage...
Chainfire
Shopaholic Takes Man...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
