Lewis Thomas Quotes About Animals

Quotes about: Animals

• We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.

  Lewis Thomas

  Life, Death, Fear

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

• Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.

  Lewis Thomas

  Science, Animal, Survival

  Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam

• Animals, even plants, lie to each other all the time, and we could restrict the research to them, putting off the real truth about ourselves for the several centuries we need to catch our breath. What is it that enables certain flowers to resemble nubile insects, or opossums to play dead, or female fireflies to change the code of their flashes in order to attract, and then eat, males of a different species?

  Lewis Thomas

  Truth, Lying, Real

  Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam

• Cats are a standing rebuke to behavioral scientists wanting to know how the minds of animals work. The mind of a cat is an unscrutable mystery.

  Lewis Thomas

  Cat, Animal, Mind

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

• Altruism has always been one of biology's deep mysteries. Why should any animal, off on its own, specified and labeled by all sorts of signals as its individual self, choose to give up its life in aid of someone else?

  Lewis Thomas

  Giving Up, Animal, Self

  Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam

• Ants are more like the parts of an animal than entities on their own. They are mobile cells, circulating through a dense connective tissue of other ants in a matrix of twigs. The circuits are so intimately interwoven that the anthill meets all the essential criteria of an organism.

  Lewis Thomas

  Animal, Cells, Essentials

  "The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher". Book by Lewis Thomas, 1974.

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