A virus is a piece of bad news wrapped up in protein.

——Peter Madawar

病毒是包裹在蛋白质里的一条坏消息。

——彼得·梅达沃

An inefficient virus kills its host.A clever virus stays with it.

——James Lovelock

低效的病毒消灭宿主，聪明的病毒与宿主共存。

——詹姆斯·洛夫洛克

The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.

——E.O.Wilson

病毒中所包含地球上的基因种类超过（或很可能超过）所有其他生物里基因种类的总和。

——E.O.威尔逊

We live in a dancing matrix of viruses; they dart, rather like bees, from organism to organism, from plant to insect to mammal to me and back again, and into the sea, tugging along pieces of this genome, strings of genes from that, transplanting grafts of DNA, passing around heredity as though at a great party.

——Lewis Thomas

我们生活在病毒舞动的矩阵之中，它们像蜜蜂一样在不同的生命体之间穿梭往返，从植物到昆虫，从别的哺乳动物到我，然后又折回头，进入海洋，拖着这个基因组的几个片段、那个基因组的几根基因链条，嫁接着DNA，传递着遗传物质，宛若在参加一场宏大的聚会。

——刘易斯·托马斯