Bacteria keeps us from heaven and puts us there.

The aphorism compresses a double-edged view of microbes that became common after germ theory: bacteria are agents of disease and death (“keeps us from heaven” in the sense of preventing an ideal, healthy life), yet they also hasten death and thus “put us there” by sending humans to the afterlife. The line plays on religious language to dramatize a scientific point—our fate is intimately tied to invisible organisms. It also hints at a broader modern ambivalence: the same biological forces that threaten human flourishing are woven into the processes that end life, and therefore into cultural ideas of destiny and salvation.