Lewis Thomas

I will confess that I have no more sense of what goes on in the mind of mankind than I have for…

— Lewis Thomas

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is…

— Lewis Thomas

Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they…

— Lewis Thomas

I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach into outer space on the Voyager spacecraft. But that would be boasting.

— Lewis Thomas

We need science, more and better science, not for its technology, not for leisure, not even for health or longevity, but for…

— Lewis Thomas

It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we all take our looks; we still share genes around, and the…

— Lewis Thomas

We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language. . . . We have affection. We have genes for usefulness,…

— Lewis Thomas

“We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth’s creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the…

— Lewis Thomas

Medical knowledge and technical savvy are biodegradable. The sort of medicine that was practiced in Boston or New York or Atlanta fifty…

— Lewis Thomas

“The oldest, easiest to swallow idea was that the earth was man's personal property, a combination of garden, zoo, bank vault, and…

— Lewis Thomas

We are not made up, as we had always supposed, of successively enriched packets of our own parts. We are shared, rented,…

— Lewis Thomas

The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency. We need all the fallibility we can…

— Lewis Thomas

A multitude of bees can tell the time of day, calculate the geometry of the sun's position, argue about the best location…

— Lewis Thomas

I don't want to be reincarnated, that's for sure. When you've had rewarding experiences in your life - a loving family, friends…

— Lewis Thomas

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic…

— Lewis Thomas

It is almost always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a period. The period tells you that that is…

— Lewis Thomas

“We are endowed with genes which code out our reaction to beavers and otters, maybe our reaction to each other as well.…

— Lewis Thomas

“Goldfish in a glass bowl are harmless to the human mind, maybe even helpful to minds casting about for something, anything, to…

— Lewis Thomas

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

— Lewis Thomas

We spend our time sending messages to each other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information. This seems…

— Lewis Thomas

Much of today's public anxiety about science is the apprehension that we may forever be overlooking the whole by an endless, obsessive…

— Lewis Thomas

Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep…

— Lewis Thomas

The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and…

— Lewis Thomas

The human mind is not meant to be governed, certainly not by any book of rules yet written; it is supposed to…

— Lewis Thomas

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

It is my belief, based partly on personal experience but partly also arrived at by looking around at others, that childhood lasts…

— Lewis Thomas

It is in our genes to understand the universe if we can, to keep trying even if we cannot, and to be…

— Lewis Thomas

We are spectacular splendid manifestations of life. We have language. We have affection. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we have…

— Lewis Thomas

I don't think that the permanence of the individual human soul is an indispensable part of religious thought.

— Lewis Thomas

If you want to use a cliche you must take full responsibility for it yourself and not try to fob it off…

— Lewis Thomas

It's just plain learning something that you didn't know. There is a real aesthetic experience in being dumbfounded.

— Lewis Thomas

It is not a simple life to be a single cell, although I have no right to say so, having been a…

— Lewis Thomas

It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality…

— Lewis Thomas

“Altruism, a jargon word for what used to be called love, is worse than weakness, it is sin, a violation of nature.…

— Lewis Thomas

Mistakes are at the very base of human thought feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the…

— Lewis Thomas

“Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that the mere fact of our existence should keep…

— Lewis Thomas

Doctors, dressed up in one professional costume or another, have been in busy practice since the earliest records of every culture on…

— Lewis Thomas

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into…

— Lewis Thomas

Good science is done by being curious in general, by asking questions all around, by acknowledging the likelihood of being wrong and…

— Lewis Thomas

Maybe there is a single spot, just one, where living organisms are holed up. Maybe so, but if so this would be…

— Lewis Thomas