Invisible Friends Quotes

“Without microbes, our food systems would collapse. Without microbes, our societies would crumble, and our bodies would not function in the long term.”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us

“A healthy person is home to a hundred times more viruses than there are individual trees on the planet – a hundred global forests of phages inside you!”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us

“If we could line the microbes from a single person’s gut up end to end, they would be able to circle the Earth two and a half times.”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us

“Microbes are the glue that holds it all together – our invisible friends.”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us

“Our health and the planet’s health are intertwined, both deeply reliant on these invisible networks of life.”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us

“Microbes were here billions of years before us, curating our DNA, our cells, and the ‘metaorganism’ we embody today.”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us

“The human immune system at birth is like a computer without data—it needs exposure to the right microbes to function properly.”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us

“By bringing back our microbial ‘old friends’ from natural environments, we can start to heal the disconnection between humans and the rest of nature.”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us

“We can view ourselves as walking ecosystems—human hosts plus trillions of microbial symbionts.”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us

“This microbial cloud we emit is a biological internet—a phenomenal multi-species correspondence.”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us

“We are simultaneously the most connected and the least connected we have ever been.”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us

“Our fleeting existence will not ensure our resident microbes live for an eternity, but there is no doubt they will find another home once we are gone.”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us

“By wandering around natural environments and allowing Streptomyces spores to hitch a ride, we could also be their dispersers.”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us

“We are connected to many others via the internet (a shallow synthetic connection), but the deep organic bonds that connect us to the rest of nature are breaking.”
― Jake Robinson, Invisible Friends: How Microbes Shape our Lives and the World around us