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
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
“The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The body of science is not, as it is sometimes thought, a huge coherent mass of facts, neatly arranged in sequence, each… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
...the life of the planet began the long, slow process of modulating and regulating the physical conditions of the planet. The oxygen… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Good applied science in medicine, as in physics, requires a high degree of certainty about the basic facts at hand, and especially… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
We're as clever as we think we are, but we'll be a lot cleverer when we learn to use not just one… — 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
Animals, even plants, lie to each other all the time, and we could restrict the research to them, putting off the real… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
It is the very strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be at the center of science teaching. There… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Science will...produce the data..., but never the full meaning. For perceiving real significance, we shall need...most of all the brains of poets,… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
I can say, if I like, that social insects behave like the working parts of an immense central nervous system: the termite… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
I suggest that the introductory courses in science, at all levels from grade school through college, be radically revised. Leave the fundamentals,… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Very few recognize science as the high adventure it really is, the wildest of all explorations ever taken by human beings, the… — 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
![“Science will...produce the data..., but never the full meaning. For perceiving real significance, we shall need...most of all the brains of poets, [and] also those of artists, musicians, philosophers, historians, writers in general.” quote by Lewis Thomas](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/80a/lewis-thomas-2299_artist_science-will-produce-the-data-but-never_2750782.png)
