René Dubos

“The word 'paradise' comes from a Persian word meaning 'walled garden'.”

“The word 'health' is derived from an Anglo-Saxon root that means 'wholeness'.”

“Serendipity is the faculty of finding things we did not know we were looking for.”

“The earth is not a mechanism but an organism, with skills and connections that are slowly being dismembered.”

“Think globally, act locally.”

“The human species can survive in a poisoned world, but it will not be a world worth living in.”

“It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life.”

“The belief that we can manage the Earth and improve on nature is probably the ultimate expression of human conceit.”

“Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back.”

“States of health or disease are the expression of the success or failure experienced by the organism in its efforts to respond adaptively to environmental challenges.”

“Each civilization has its own kind of pestilence and controls it only by reforming itself.”

“Man will survive as a species for one reason: He can adapt to the destructive agencies of his own creation.”

“Trends are not destiny.”

“We are shaped by the earth. We are shaped by the sky. We are shaped by the stars.”

“In the most primitive societies the production of food is always accompanied by rituals, ceremonies, and magic.”