The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Cats - a standing rebuke to behavioural scientists . . . least human of all creatures. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest of life. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
I don't think that the permanence of the individual human soul is an indispensable part of religious thought. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrasment...They do everything but watch television. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
We still think of human disease as the work of an organized, modernized kind of demonology, in which the bacteria are the… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Montaigne simply turns his mind loose and writes whatever he feels like writing. Mostly, he wants to say that reason is not… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Society evolves not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
We are at our human finest, dancing with our minds, when there are more choices than two. Sometimes there are ten, even… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
It is a distortion, with something profoundly disloyal about it, to picture the human being as a teetering, fallible contraption, always needing,… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
I do not agree with this century's fashion of running down the human species as a failed try, a doomed sport. At… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The need to make music, and to listen to it, is universally expressed by human beings. I cannot imagine, even in our… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The human brain is the most public organ on the face of the earth, open to everything, sending out messages to everything.… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
As a people, we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The greatest achievements in the science of this [twentieth] century are themselves the sources of more puzzlement than human beings have ever… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
I am entitled to say, if I like, that awareness exists in all the individual creatures on the planet-worms, sea urchins, gnats,… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature... It… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry; we meditate over… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The human mind is not meant to be governed, certainly not by any book of rules yet written; it is supposed to… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The drive to be useful is encoded in our genes. But when we gather in very large numbers, as in the modern… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
“We are endowed with genes which code out our reaction to beavers and otters, maybe our reaction to each other as well. We are… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share
We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language. . . . We have affection. We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share
“It is not a simple thing to decide where we fit, for at one time or another in our lives we manage to organize… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share
It is in our genes to understand the universe if we can, to keep trying even if we cannot, and to be enchanted by… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share
If an idea cannot move on its own, pushing it doesn't help; best to let it lie there. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share
I do not agree with this century's fashion of running down the human species as a failed try, a doomed sport. At our worst,… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share
It would seem to me... an offense against nature, for us to come on the same scene endowed as we are with the curiosity,… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share
The drive to be useful is encoded in our genes. But when we gather in very large numbers, as in the modern nation-state, we… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share
I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach into outer space on the Voyager spacecraft. But that would be boasting. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share
“The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency. We need all the fallibility we can get. Most… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share
We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature;… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share
“The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share
Having long suspected that there was something alive in there, running the place, separate from everything else, absolutely individual and independent, we've celebrated by… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share
![“The greatest achievements in the science of this [twentieth] century are themselves the sources of more puzzlement than human beings have ever experienced. Indeed, it is likely that the twentieth century will be looked back at as the time when science provided the first close glimpse of the…” quote by Lewis Thomas](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/0f5/lewis-thomas-2299_accounts_the-greatest-achievements-in-the-science_2406887.jpg)
