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
“I didn't think I was a personal problem. You hate me, remember?" "Every inch of you," Andrew said. "That doesn't mean I wouldn't blow you." The world tilted a little bit sideways. Neil dug his shoes harder into the floor so he wouldn't fall over. "You like me." "I hate you," Andrew corrected him, but Neil barely heard him.”
― Nora Sakavic, quote from The King's Men
“They lived in a great city, a metropolis of many narratives that converged briefly and then separated for ever, discovering their different dooms in that crowd of stories through which all of us, following our own destinies, had to push and shove to find our way through, or out. ”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from The Ground Beneath Her Feet
“… it would even be inexact to say that I thought of those who read it as readers of my book. Because they were not, as I saw it, my readers. More exactly they were readers of themselves, my book being a sort of magnifying glass … by which I could give them the means to read within themselves.”
― Marcel Proust, quote from Time Regained
“Outside, daylight was bleeding slowly toward dusk.”
― Richard Bachman, quote from The Running Man
“When we are children, when we are young, it is natural to love our friends, to be generous to them, to forgive their faults.. But as we grow old and have to earn our bread, friendship does not endure so easily. We must always be on our guard. Our elders no longer look after us, we are no longer content with those simple pleasures of children. Pride grows in us – we wish to become great or powerful or rich, or simply to guard ourself against misfortune.”
― Mario Puzo, quote from The Sicilian
We Are the Ants
History Is All You L...
The Betrothed
Jo's Boys
Flesh and Blood
Eugénie GrandetBookQuoters 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.
