Ink, n. Avillainous compound†chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocyand promote intellectual crime.

-Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett
  The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

No science is immuneto the infection of politics and the corruption of power.

-Bronowski,Jacob
In The Listener.

That it is at least as difficult to staya moral infection as a physical one; that such a disease will spread with the malignityand rapidity of the Plague; that the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest health, and become developed inthe most unlikely constitutions; is a fact as firmlyestablished by experience as that we human creatures breathe an atmosphere.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^7  Little Dorrit, bk.2, ch.13.

What, then, was war? No mere discord of flags But an infection of the common sky That sagged ominously upon the earth Even when the season was the airiest May?

-Graves, Robert von Ranke
  'Recalling War'.

And it is a wonder what will be the fashion after the plagueisdoneastoperiwigs, fornobody will daretobuy any haire for fear of the infectionöthat it had been cut off the heads of people dead of the plague.

-Pepys, Samuel
  Diary entry, 3 Sep.

There were many ways of not burdening one's conscience, of shunning responsibility, looking away, keeping silent.When the unspeakable truth of the Holocaust became known at the end of the war, all too many of us claimed that they had not known anything about it, orevensuspectedanything† Whoeverrefuses to remember the inhumanity is prone to new risks of infection† Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance.

-Weizsa«  cker, Richard Freiherr, Baron von
  On the 40th anniversary of the end of WorldWar II, in the NewYorkTimes,12 May.