Hans Zinsser

“Swords, Lances, arrows, machine guns, and even high explosives have had far less power over the fates of nations than the typhus louse, the plague flea, and the yellow-fever mosquito. Civilizations have retreated from the plasmodium of malaria, and armies have crumbled into rabbles under the onslaught of cholera spirilla, or of dysentery and typhoid bacilli. Huge areas have bee devastated by the trypanosome that travels on the wings of the tsetse fly, and generations have been harassed by the syphilis of a courtier. War and conquest and that herd existence which is an accompaniment of what we call civilization have merely set the stage for these more powerful agents of human tragedy.”
― Hans Zinsser, Rats, Lice and History

“Man and rats are merely, so far, the most successful animals of prey. They are utterly destructive of other forms of life. Neither of them is of the slightest use to any other species of living things.”
― Hans Zinsser, Rats, Lice, and History: A Chronicle of Pestilence and Plagues