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Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s.

Bill Bryson

It is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.
BILL BRYSON

Curious Good Planets Promoting Very
That’s the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it’s gone, it’s too late to get it back.
BILL BRYSON

Gone Late Mind Too
We are so used to the notion of our own inevitability as life’s dominant species that it is hard to grasp that we are here only because of timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes.
BILL BRYSON

Doors Four Years
But that’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.
BILL BRYSON

Country Memorable Travel
Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.
BILL BRYSON

Baseball Football Latin
The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billions years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to.
BILL BRYSON

Billion Closing Common Doors Managed Thing Years
Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s.
BILL BRYSON

Antibiotic Industry Pharmaceutical
There seemed to be a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the realm of the mildly interesting and was always at least a long-distance phone call from the frankly interesting.
BILL BRYSON

Distance Long Phones
To understand what anyone is saying to us we must separate these noises into words and the words into sentences so that we might in our turn issue a stream of mixed sounds in response.
BILL BRYSON

Noises Sentences Separate Stream Understand
Cheapness is a great virtue.
BILL BRYSON

Cheapness Great Virtue
This much may have happened many times before. But this ancestral packet did something additional and extraordinary. It cleaved itself and produced an heir.
BILL BRYSON

Additional Cleaveed Produced Something
Where I grew up, in Des Moines, Iowa, there is hardly any downtown economic activity now. Everybody shops in malls – you don’t find a sense of community in malls.
BILL BRYSON

Community Downtown Iowa
But here’s an extrememly salient point: we have been chosen, by fate or Providence or whatever you wish to call it. As far as we can tell, we are the best there is.
BILL BRYSON

Chosen Far Providence Whatever Wish
There is the odd exception, like Albert Einstein, but as a breed, scientists tend not be very good at presenting themselves.
BILL BRYSON

Odd Scientist Very Good
Absolute brain size does not tell you everything or possibly sometimes even much. Elephants and whales both have brains larger than ours, but you wouldn’t have much trouble outwitting them in contract negotiations.
BILL BRYSON

Brain Elephants Whales
Every living thing is an elaboration of a single original plan. As humans we are mere increments – each of us a musty archive of adjustments, adaptations, modifications and providential tinkerings stretching back to 3,8 billion years.
BILL BRYSON

Profound Vegetables Years

Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s.

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Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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