Men are naturally most impressed by diseases which have obvious manifestations, yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively.
Interpretation
People tend to fear and notice obvious problems, while the more subtle issues can be much more harmful.
Rene Dubos highlights a critical aspect of human nature: we often react strongly to visible threats, such as diseases with clear symptoms, while ignoring or underestimating stealthy dangers that may be more damaging in the long run. This quote encourages awareness of less obvious challenges that can undermine our well-being.
In practice
In a speech about public health, one might say, 'As Rene Dubos pointed out, we should not just focus on diseases that are visible but also recognize those that creep up quietly.'
The wooing of the Earth thus implies much more than converting the wilderness into humanized environments. It means also preserving natural environments in which to experience mysteries transcending daily life and from which to recapture, in a Proustian kind of remembrance, the awareness of the cosmic forces that have shaped humankind.
Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.
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.
Nature always strikes back. It takes all the running we can do to remain in the same place.
Economics and a reliance on science and technology to solve our problems has led to an unsustainable situation where continued growth in consumption is required for governments and business to be considered successful. This is a form of insanity. Economics is at the heart of our destructive ways and our faith in it has blinded us
The greatest obstacle in the apostolate of the Church is the timidity or rather the cowardice of the faithful.
Who then is free? The one who wisely is lord of themselves, who neither poverty, death or captivity terrify, who is strong to resist his appetites and shun honors, and is complete in themselves smooth and round like a globe
I teach you the Overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? ... The time has come for man to set himself a goal. The time has come to plant the seed to his highest hope.
Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.
For as men in battle are continually in the way of shot, so we, in this world, are ever within the reach of Temptation.
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