We are told that the trouble with modern man is that he has been trying to detach himself from nature... In this… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
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
Of all celestial bodies within reach or view, as far as we can see, out to the edge, the most wonderful and… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. ...… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
We have dominated and overruled nature, and from now on the earth is ours, a kitchen garden until we learn to make… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
The uniformity of earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. The… — 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 species, taking all in all, we are still too young, too juvenile, to be trusted. We have spread across the… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
I am a member of a fragile species, still new to the earth, the youngest creatures of any scale, here only a… — 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
Doctors, dressed up in one professional costume or another, have been in busy practice since the earliest records of every culture on… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The overwhelming astonishment, the queerest structure we know about so far in the whole universe, the greatest of all cosmological scientific puzzles,… — 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
