Rene Dubos Quotes
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Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back.
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Clearly, health and disease cannot be defined merely in terms of anatomical, physiological, or mental attributes. Their real measure is the ability of the individual to function in a manner acceptable to himself and to the group of which he is a part.
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Sometimes the more measurable drives out the most important.
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Man will survive as a species for one reason: He can adapt to the destructive effects of our power-intoxicated technology and of our ungoverned population growth, to the dirt, pollution and noise of a New York or Tokyo. And that is the tragedy. It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life.
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The very process of living is a continual interplay between the individual and his environment, often taking the form of a struggle resulting in injury or disease.
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But solving problems of disease is not the same thing as creating health and happiness. (...) Health and happiness are the expression of the manner in which the individual responds and adapts to the challenges that he meets in everyday life.
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Each civilization has its own kind of pestilence and can control it only by reforming itself.
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Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.
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The earth is literally our mother, not only because we depend on her for nurture and shelter but even more because the human sepcies has been shaped by her in the womb of evolution. Our salvation depends upon our ability to create a religion of nature.
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The mechanisms of vis medicatrix naturæ—the most healing power of nature—are so effective that most diseases are self-terminating.
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One may wonder indeed whether the pretense of superior health is not itself rapidly becoming a mental aberration.
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What happens in the mind of man is always reflected in the disease of his body.
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Man not only survives and functions in his environment, he shapes it and he is shaped by it.
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To ward off disease or recover health, people as a rule find it easier to depend on healers than to attempt the more difficult task of living wisely.
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As long as mankind is made up of independent individuals with free will, there cannot be any social status quo. Men will develop new urges, and these will give rise to new problems, which will require ever new solutions. Human life implies adventure, and there is no adventure without struggles and dangers.