Sometimes it takes a germ of an idea, which takes a long…

A bacteriologist is a man whose conversation always start with the germ of an idea.

— Evan Esar

It's obviously unfair to paint with a broad brush here, but the germ of an idea for a breakthrough in technology doesn't come out…

— Michael Moritz

Anyway, that was the germ of the idea and of course... you know this was early days of sociology and whatever, especially on television.

— Michael Apted

A disease of the mind, [whose] germ is the idea that one may learn that which is valuable, or in any way acquire virtue,…

— Kingsley Martin

“When an idea takes hold, nothing can stop it!”

— Stephen Richards

In the germ, when the first trace of life begins to stir, music is the nurse of the soul; it murmurs in the ear,…

— Bettina Skrzypczak

If the ‘germ theory of disease’ were correct, there’d be no one living to believe it.

— B. J. Palmer

Germ warfare against the United States would escalate to war against all humanity.

— Yoshijiro Umezu

Almost no germ is unconditionally dangerous to man; its disease-producing ability depends upon the body's resistance.

— Hans Selye

The terrain is everything; the germ is nothing,

— Claude Bernard

The germ of a story is a new and simple element introduced into an existing situation or mood.

— Malcolm Cowley

Germ theory, which secularized infectious disease, had a side effect: it sacralized epidemiology.

— Jill Lepore

Well germ warfare of course exists. There have been on a small scale... There have been, of course, a few people who got killed…

— Freeman Dyson

The first step toward the management of disease was replacement of demon theories and humours theories by the germ theory. That very step, the…

— Fred Brooks

Bernard was right. The germ is nothing, the terrain is everything.

— Louis Pasteur