The Great Influenza Quotes

“Society cannot function if it is every man for himself. By definition, civilization cannot survive that.
Those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

“Influenza killed more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century; it killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“You don't manage the truth. You tell the truth.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

“The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“In fact, biology is chaos. Biological systems are the product not of logic but of evolution, an inelegant process. Life does not choose the logically best design to meet a new situation. It adapts what already exists...The result, unlike the clean straight lines of logic, is often irregular, messy.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

“So the final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that those who occupy positions of authority must lessen the panic that can alienate all within a society. Society cannot function if it is every man for himself. By definition, civilization cannot survive that. Those in authority must retain the public’s trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“Yet institutions are human as well. They reflect the cumulative personalities of those within them, especially their leadership. They tend, unfortunately, to mirror less admirable human traits, developing and protecting self-interest and even ambition. Institutions almost never sacrifice. Since they live by rules, they lack spontaneity. They try to order chaos not in the way an artist or scientist does, through a defining vision that creates structure and discipline, but by closing off and isolating themselves from that which does not fit. They become bureaucratic.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“The two most important questions in science are “What can I know?” and “How can I know it?”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“The fear, not the disease, threatened to break the society apart.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“As terrifying the disease was, the press made it more so. They terrified by making little of it, for what officials and the press said bore no relationship to what people saw and touched and smelled and endured. People could not trust what they read. Uncertainty follows distrust, fear follow uncertainty, and, under conditions such as these, terror follows fear.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

“Viruses are themselves an enigma that exist on the edges of life. They are not simply small bacteria. Bacteria consist of only one cell, but they are fully alive. Each has a metabolism, requires food, produces waste, and reproduces by division. Viruses do not eat or burn oxygen for energy. They do not engage in any process that could be considered metabolic. They do not produce waste. They do not have sex. They make no side products, by accident or design. They do not even reproduce independently. They are less than a fully living organism but more than an inert collection of chemicals.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“Another explanation for the failure of logic and observation alone to advance medicine is that unlike, say, physics, which uses a form of logic - mathematics - as its natural language, biology does not lend itself to logic. Leo Szilard, a prominent physicist, made this point when he complained that after switching from physics to biology he never had a peaceful bath again. As a physicist he would soak in the warmth of a bathtub and contemplate a problem, turn it in his mind, reason his way through it. But once he became a biologist, he constantly had to climb out of the bathtub to look up a fact.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History

“Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.” He also believed that learning had purpose, stating, “The great end of life is not knowledge but action.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“overstate to make a point—warned, civilization could have disappeared within a few more weeks. So the final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that those who occupy positions of authority must lessen the panic that can alienate all within a society. Society cannot function if it is every man for himself. By definition, civilization cannot survive that. Those in authority must retain the public’s trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“Epidemiologists have computed that measles requires an unvaccinated population of at least half a million people living in fairly close contact to continue to exist.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“Certainty creates strength. Certainty gives one something upon which to lean. Uncertainty creates weakness. Uncertainty makes one tentative if not fearful, and tentative steps, even when in the right direction, may not overcome significant obstacles.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“biology is chaos. Biological systems are the product not of logic but of evolution, an inelegant process.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“He advised, “Whenever you fall, pick up something.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“Emerson said that an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man,”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“relationship with nature, modern humanity has generally been the aggressor, and a daring one at that, altering the flow of rivers, building upon geological faults, and, today, even engineering the genes of existing species. Nature has generally been languid in its response, although contentious once aroused and occasionally displaying a flair for violence. By 1918 humankind was fully modern, and fully scientific, but too busy fighting itself to aggress against nature. Nature, however, chooses its own moments. It chose this moment to aggress against man, and it did not do so prodding languidly. For the first time, modern humanity, a humanity practicing the modern scientific method, would confront nature in its fullest rage.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“For the influenza pandemic that erupted in 1918 was the first great collision between nature and modern science. It was the first great collision between a natural force and a society that included individuals who refused either to submit to that force or to simply call upon divine intervention to save themselves from it, individuals who instead were determined to confront this force directly, with a developing technology and with their minds.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“Surgeon General’s Advice to Avoid Influenza Avoid needless crowding. . . . Smother your coughs and sneezes. . . . Your nose not your mouth was made to breathe thru. . . . Remember the 3 Cs, clean mouth, clean skin, and clean clothes. . . . Food will win the war. . . . [H]elp by choosing and chewing your food well. . . . Wash your hands before eating. . . . Don’t let the waste products of digestion accumulate. . . . Avoid tight clothes, tight shoes, tight gloves—seek to make nature your ally not your prisoner. . . . When the air is pure breathe all of it you can—breathe deeply.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“All positive knowledge obtained . . . has resulted from the accurate observation of facts.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“No medicine and none of the vaccines developed then could prevent influenza. The masks worn by millions were useless as designed and could not prevent influenza. Only preventing exposure to the virus could. Nothing today can cure influenza, although vaccines can provide significant—but nowhere near complete—protection, and several antiviral drugs can mitigate its severity. Places that isolated themselves—such as Gunnison, Colorado, and a few military installations on islands—escaped. But the closing orders that most cities issued could not prevent exposure; they were not extreme enough. Closing saloons and theaters and churches meant nothing if significant numbers of people continued to climb onto streetcars, continued to go to work, continued to go to the grocer. Even where fear closed down businesses, where both store owners and customers refused to stand face-to-face and left orders on sidewalks, there was still too much interaction to break the chain of infection. The virus was too efficient, too explosive, too good at what it did. In the end the virus did its will around the world.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“Huxley did not look the warrior. But he had a warrior’s ruthlessness. His dicta included the pronouncement: “The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“new influenza virus emerges, it is highly competitive, even cannibalistic. It usually drives older types into extinction. This happens because infection stimulates the body’s immune system to generate all its defenses against all influenza viruses to which the body has ever been exposed. When older viruses attempt to infect someone, they cannot gain a foothold. They cease replicating. They die out. So, unlike practically every other known virus, only one type—one swarm or quasi species—of influenza virus dominates at any given time. This itself helps prepare the way for a new pandemic, since the more time passes, the fewer people’s immune systems will recognize other antigens.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“But even after European medicine changed, medicine in the United States did not. In research and education especially, American medicine lagged far behind, and that made practice lag as well.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“One nurse at Great Lakes would later be haunted by nightmares. The wards had forty-two beds; boys lying on the floor on stretchers waited for the boy on the bed to die. Every morning the ambulances arrived and stretcher bearers carried sick sailors in and bodies out. She remembered that at the peak of the epidemic the nurses wrapped more than one living patient in winding sheets and put toe tags on the boys’ left big toe. It saved time, and the nurses were utterly exhausted. The toe tags were shipping tags, listing the sailor’s name, rank, and hometown. She remembered bodies “stacked in the morgue from floor to ceiling like cord wood.” In her nightmares she wondered “what it would feel like to be that boy who was at the bottom of the cord wood in the morgue.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“It kept people apart. . . . It took away all your community life, you had no community life, you had no school life, you had no church life, you had nothing. . . . It completely destroyed all family and community life. People were afraid to kiss one another, people were afraid to eat with one another, they were afraid to have anything that made contact because that’s how you got the flu. . . . It destroyed those contacts and destroyed the intimacy that existed amongst people. . . . You were constantly afraid, you were afraid because you saw so much death around you, you were surrounded by death. . . . When each day dawned you didn’t know whether you would be there when the sun set that day. It wiped out entire families from the time that the day began in the morning to bedtime at night—entire families were gone completely, there wasn’t any single soul left, and that didn’t happen just intermittently, it happened all the way across the neighborhoods, it was a terrifying experience. It justifiably should be called a plague because that’s what it was. . . . You were quarantined, is what you were, from fear, it was so quick, so sudden. . . . There was an aura of a constant fear that you lived through from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History