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Rene Dubos Biography

René Jules Dubos (February 20, 1901 – February 20, 1982) was a French-born American microbiologist, experimental pathologist, environmentalist, humanist, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book So Human An Animal. He is credited for having made famous Jacques Ellul's environmental maxim, "Think globally, act locally" (penser global, agir local).

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Rene Dubos Quotes

The belief that we can manage the Earth and improve on Nature is probably the ultimate expression of human conceit, but it has deep roots in the past and is almost universal.

Belief, Conceit, Expression, Manage, Nature, Past

. . . each type of civilization has had diseases peculiar to it and at each period the various social groups in any community also have differed in this regard.

Civilization, Community, Groups, Peculiar, Social

Wherever human beings are concerned, trend is not destiny.

Concerned, Destiny, Human, Trend, Trends

. . . Search for the cause may be a hopeless pursuit because most disease states are the indirect outcome of a constellation of circumstances.

Age, Dark, Hopeless, May, Pursuit, States

Life is short, the art is long, the problems pressing.

Art, Life, Long, Problems, Short

Man could escape danger only by renouncing adventure, by abandoning that which has given to the human condition its unique character and genius among the rest of living things.

Abandoning, Adventure, Character, Rest, Unique

Man shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment.

Decision, Decisions, Men, Shape, Shapes, Tree

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.

Adventure, Develop, Independent, Social, Solutions, Struggle

A sense of continuity with the rest of creation is a form of religious experience essential to sanity.

Continuity, Essential, Essentials, Religion, Religious, Rest

The mechanisms of vis medicatrix naturæ—the most healing power of nature—are so effective that most diseases are self-terminating.

Diseases, Healing, Health, Medicatrix, Self, Vis

There is a demon in technology. It was put there by man and man will have to exorcise it before technological civilization can achieve the eighteenth-century ideal of humane civilized life.

Civilization, Exorcise, Men, Technological, Technology

One may wonder indeed whether the pretense of superior health is not itself rapidly becoming a mental aberration.

Aberration, Health, May, Mental, Rapidly, Wonder

Each civilization has its own kind of pestilence and can control it only by reforming itself.

Civilization, Control, Culture, Kind, Pestilence

It is a disturbing fact that Western civilization, which claims to have achieved the highest standard of health in history, finds itself compelled to spend ever-increasing sums for the control of disease.

Civilization, Control, Disease, Health, Standard

It is often by a trivial, even an anecdotal decision, that we direct our activities into a certain channel, and thus determine which of the potential expressions of our individuality become manifest. Usually we know nothing of the ultimate orientation or of the outlet toward which we travel, and the stream sweeps us to a formula of life from which there is no returning. Every decision is like a murder, and our march forward is over the stillborn bodies of all our possible selves that will never be.

Decision, Expression, Murder, Self, Selves, Trivial

Men are naturally most impressed by diseases which have obvious manifestations, yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively.

Disease, Enemies, Manifestations, Men, Naturally, Worst Enemy

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

Bound, Destiny, Environmental, Strikes, Unforeseeable

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.

Differences, Diversity, Human, Humanity, Requirement, Tolerance

What happens in the mind of man is always reflected in the disease of his body.

Body, Happens, Man, Men, Mind, Reflected

Pathological states are the consequence of several determinate factors acting simultaneously. . . The manifestations of any given agent differ profoundly from one person to another. . . . Each noxious agent can express itself by a great variety of different pathological states. . . . Different agents can elicit similar reactions. . . . The total environment and the (interior medium) constitute a multifactorial system.

Acting, Age, Constitute, Dark, Given, Variety

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