A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system. - Jane Smiley
To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live. - Frances Hodgson Burnett
There is in us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man to ponder or create; and in this dim corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow creatures does not provide. - Norman Douglas
The germ of success in whatever you want to accomplish is in your will power. - Paramahansa Yogananda
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. - James Madison
How can a person have a sense of something if he does not have the germ of it within himself. What I am to understand must develop organically within me--and what I seem to learn is only nourishment--stimulation of the organism. - Novalis