Lewis Thomas Quotes - Page 2

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• We live in a dancing matrix of viruses; they dart, rather like bees, from organism to organism, from plant to insect to mammal to me and back again, and into the sea, tugging along pieces of this genome, strings of genes from that, transplanting grafts of DNA, passing around heredity as though at a great party.

  Lewis Thomas

  Party, Dna, Sea

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

  19 Copy quote

• Our behavior toward each other is the strangest, most unpredictable, and most unaccountable of all the phenomena with which we are obliged to live. In all of nature, there is nothing so threatening to humanity as humanity itself.

  Lewis Thomas

  Humanity, Threatening, Behavior

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

  7 Copy quote

• A multitude of bees can tell the time of day, calculate the geometry of the sun's position, argue about the best location for the next swarm. Bees do a lot of close observing of other bees; maybe they know what follows stinging and do it anyway.

  Lewis Thomas

  Next, Location, Sun

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

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  16 Copy quote

• Perhaps the safest thing to do at the outset, if technology permits, is to send music. This language may be the best we have for explaining what we are like to others in space, with least ambiguity. I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging of course, but it is surely excusable to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later.

  Lewis Thomas

  Technology, Space, Would Be

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

  11 Copy quote

• The gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest of life.

  Lewis Thomas

  Rest Of Life, Language, Mark

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

  8 Copy quote

• It is the very strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be at the center of science teaching. There are more than seven-times-seven types of ambiguity in science, awaiting analysis. The poetry of Wallace Stevens is crystal-clear alongside the genetic code.

  Lewis Thomas

  Nature, Teaching, Science

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

  6 Copy quote

• The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning.

  Lewis Thomas

  Morning, Doctors, Wife

  8 Copy quote

• There's really no such thing as the agony of dying. I'm quite sure that pain is shut off at the moment of death. You see, something happens when the body knows it's about to go. Peptide hormones are released by cells in the hypothalamus and pituitary gland. Endorphins. They attach themselves to the cells responsible for feeling pain.

  Lewis Thomas

  Pain, Cells, Agony

  60 Copy quote

• Given any new technology for transmitting information, we seem bound to use it for great quantities of small talk. We are only saved by music from being overwhelmed by nonsense.

  Lewis Thomas

  Technology, Use, Information

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

  4 Copy quote

• In real life, every field of science is incomplete, and most of them - whatever the record of accomplishment during the last 200 years - are still in their very earliest stages.

  Lewis Thomas

  Real, Years, Accomplishment

  20 Copy quote

• The greatest single achievement of nature to date was surely the invention of the molecule DNA.

  Lewis Thomas

  Nature, Science, Dna

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

  17 Copy quote

• I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think of it this way. It is too big, too complex, with too many working parts lacking visible connections. The other night, driving through a hilly, wooded part of southern New England, I wondered about this. If not like an organism, what is it like, what is it most like? Then, satisfactorily for that moment, it came to me: it is most like a single cell

  Lewis Thomas

  Night, Thinking, Cells

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

  13 Copy quote

• At this early stage in our evolution, now through our infancy and into our childhood and then, with luck, our growing up, what our species needs most of all, right now, is simply a future.

  Lewis Thomas

  Growing Up, Childhood, Luck

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

  13 Copy quote

• I cannot think of a single field in biology or medicine in which we can claim genuine understanding, and it seems to me the more we learn about living creatures, especially ourselves, the stranger life becomes.

  Lewis Thomas

  Life, Science, Thinking

  15 Copy quote

• All of today's DNA, strung through all the cells of the earth, is simply an extension and elaboration of [the] first molecule.

  Lewis Thomas

  Science, Dna, Cells

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

  8 Copy quote

• I maintain, despite the moment's evidence against the claim, that we are born and grow up with a fondness for each other, and we have genes for that. We can be talked out of it, for the genetic message is like a distant music, and some of us are hard-of-hearing. Societies are noisy affairs, drowning out the sound of ourselves and our connection.

  Lewis Thomas

  Growing Up, Hearing, Messages

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

  6 Copy quote

• I won't compare ants and people, but ants give us a useful model of how single members of a community can become so organized that they end up resembling, in effect, one big collective brain. Our own exploding population and communication technology are leading us that way.

  Lewis Thomas

  Communication, Technology, People

  11 Copy quote

• Worrying is the most natural and spontaneous of all human functions.

  Lewis Thomas

  Worry, Spontaneous, Natural

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

  11 Copy quote

• Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrasment...They do everything but watch television.

  Lewis Thomas

  Sarcastic, Sarcasm, Watches

  7 Copy quote

• Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. ... It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun

  Lewis Thomas

  Distance, Moon, Self

  The Lives of a Cell "The World's Biggest Membrane" (1974)

  4 Copy quote

• The earliest sensation at the onset of illness, often preceding the recognition of identifiable symptoms, is apprehension. Something has gone wrong, and a glimpse of mortality shifts somewhere deep in the mind. It is the most ancient of our fears.

  Lewis Thomas

  Mind, Glimpse, Gone

  Lewis Thomas (1996). “Fragile Species”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• We're as clever as we think we are, but we'll be a lot cleverer when we learn to use not just one brain but to pool huge numbers of brains. We're at a level technologically where we can share information and think collectively about our problems. We do it in science all the time - there's no reason why we can't do it in other endeavors.

  Lewis Thomas

  Clever, Thinking, Numbers

  5 Copy quote

• I am a member of a fragile species, still new to the earth, the youngest creatures of any scale, here only a few moments as evolutionary time is measured, a juvenile species, a child of a species. We are only tentatively set in place, error prone, at risk of fumbling, in real danger at the moment of leaving behind only a thin layer of of our fossils, radioactive at that.

  Lewis Thomas

  Children, Real, Errors

  Lewis Thomas (1996). “Fragile Species”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• Things are bound to begin happening if you've got your wits about you. You create the lucky accidents.

  Lewis Thomas

  Lucky, Wit, Accidents

  6 Copy quote

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