Chris Stanford

“The trouble is, there is nothing less spectacular than a pestilence and, if only because they last so long, great misfortunes are monotonous. In the memory of those who have lived through them, the dreadful days of the plague do not seem like vast flames, cruel and magnificent, but rather like an endless trampling that flattened everything in its path.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“A pestilence does not have human dimensions, so people tell themselves that it is unreal, that it is a bad dream which will end. But it does not always end and, from one bad dream to the next, it is people who end, humanists first of all because they have not prepared themselves.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“Richard felt that they should not paint too black a picture, and that in any case there was no proof of contagion since the relatives of his patients were still unaffected. ‘But others have died,’ Rieux pointed out. ‘And, of course, contagion is never absolute, because if it were, we should have endless exponential growth and devastating loss of population. It’s not a matter of painting a black picture; it’s a matter of taking precautions.’ However, Richard thought he could sum the situation up by saying that if they were to halt the disease, assuming it did not stop of its own accord, they had to apply the serious preventive health measures provided for in law; that, to do so, they would have to acknowledge officially that there was an outbreak of plague; that there was no absolute certainty on that score; and consequently that they should consider the matter.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“There have been as many plagues in the world as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague