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 Copy Share Image
We do not understand much of anything, from... the "big bang" , all the way down to the particles in the atoms… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
It is not a simple life to be a single cell, although I have no right to say so, having been a… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
We carry stores of DNA in our nuclei that may have come in, at one time or another, from the fusion of… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
We are not made up, as we had always supposed, of successively enriched packets of our own parts. We are shared, rented,… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Given the opportunity, under the right conditions, two cells from wildly different sources, a yeast cell, say, and a chicken erythrocyte, will… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Ants are more like the parts of an animal than entities on their own. They are mobile cells, circulating through a dense… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
There's really no such thing as the agony of dying. I'm quite sure that pain is shut off at the moment of… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
I agree that you might clone some people who would look amazingly like their parental cell donors, but the odds are that… — 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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
If an idea cannot move on its own, pushing it doesn't help; best to let it lie there. — 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 our worst,… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
