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Portrait of Lewis Thomas

Lewis Thomas

(1913–1993) Medical Author

173 quotes in 1135 categories

Lewis Thomas marvels at humanity’s built‑in curiosity and the way our genes push us to keep learning. He reminds us that some ideas are best left alone, and that nature never tolerates a long silence. These thoughts blend science with a gentle reverence for life.

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Lewis Thomas was a medical author, best known for A general theory of love.

Quick Facts About Lewis Thomas

Born: November 25, 1913
Died: December 3, 1993
Profession: Medical Author
Notable works: A general theory of love

About Lewis Thomas

He also worked as an etymologist, administrator, educator and policy advisor, and contributed regularly to The New England Journal of Medicine. He won the National Book Award in Arts and Letters and the Sciences for The Lives of a Cell.

Quotes by Lewis Thomas

We are built to make mistakes, coded for error.

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“Nature abhors a long silence.”

Long silence

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We have come a long way on that old molecule DNA.

Dna

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Man is embedded in nature.

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It is in our collective behavior that we are most mysterious.

Behavior

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Most things get better by themselves. Most things, in fact, are better by morning.

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We leave traces of ourselves wherever we go, on whatever we touch.

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“The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency.”

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

Accidents

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For total greed, rapacity, heartlessness, and irresponsibility there is nothing to match a nation.

Greed

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The most solid piece of scientific truth I know of is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature.

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Cats - a standing rebuke to behavioural scientists . . . least human of all creatures.

Animals

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In the fields I know best, among the life sciences, it is required that the most expert and sophisticated minds be capable…

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The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance

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It hurts the spirit, somehow, to read the word environments, when the plural means that there are so many alternatives there to…

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Given any new technology for transmitting information, we seem bound to use it for great quantities of small talk. We are only…

Being overwhelmed

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Having long suspected that there was something alive in there, running the place, separate from everything else, absolutely individual and independent, we've…

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At this early stage in our evolution, now through our infancy and into our childhood and then, with luck, our growing up,…

Biology

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The central task of science is to arrive, stage by stage, at a clearer comprehension of nature, but this does not at…

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We are educated to be amazed by the infinite variety of life forms in nature. We are, I believe, only at the…

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The need to make music, and to listen to it, is universally expressed by human beings. I cannot imagine, even in our…

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We hanker to go on, even in the face of plain evidence that long, long lives are not necessarily pleasurable in the…

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Of all celestial bodies within reach or view, as far as we can see, out to the edge, the most wonderful and…

Body

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The human brain is the most public organ on the face of the earth, open to everything, sending out messages to everything.…

Affair

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Ants are more like the parts of an animal than entities on their own. They are mobile cells, circulating through a dense…

Animal

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On any Tuesday morning, if asked, a good working scientist will tell you with some self-satisfaction that the affairs of his field…

Affair

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We have dominated and overruled nature, and from now on the earth is ours, a kitchen garden until we learn to make…

Earth

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I do not understand modern physics at all, but my colleagues who know a lot about the physics of very small things,…

Atoms

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“Working on a typewriter by touch, like riding a bicycle or strolling on a path, is best done by not giving it…

Riding a bicycle

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“The individual parts played by other instrumentalists-- crickets or earthworms, for instance-- may not have the sound of music by themselves, but…

Music

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“It is in our collective behavior that we are the most mysterious. We won't be able to construct machines like ourselves until…

Computers

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The commas are the most useful and usable of all the stops. It is highly important to put them in place as…

Affection

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“Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would…

Biology

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“It is hard to feel affection for something as totally impersonal as the atmosphere, and yet there it is, as much a…

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It is when physicians are bogged down by their incomplete technologies, by the innumerable things they are obliged to do in medicine…

Basic research

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I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think…

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The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

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If an idea cannot move on its own, pushing it doesn't help; best to let it lie there.

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Everything here is alive thanks to the living of everything else.

Alive

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We have yet to learn how to retain our humaneness when assembled in masses.

Humaneness

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Lewis Thomas by topic

Science (54) Nature (35) Life (27) Time (25) Humans (25) Evolution (19) Earth (15) Thinking (14) Psychology (14) Mind (13) Music (11) Biology (11) Language (10)