The greatest single achievement of nature to date was surely the invention of the molecule DNA. — 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
The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Survival, in the cool economics of biology, means simply the persistence of one's own genes in the generations to follow. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
At this early stage in our evolution, now through our infancy and into our childhood and then, with luck, our growing up,… — 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
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
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
Well, biology today as I see it has an amiable look - quite different from the 19th-century view that the whole arrangement… — 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
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
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
Maybe there is a single spot, just one, where living organisms are holed up. Maybe so, but if so this would be… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
My mitochondria comprise a very large proportion of me. I cannot do the calculation, but I suppose there is almost as much… — 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
I maintain, despite the moment's evidence against the claim, that we are born and grow up with a fondness for each other,… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
As evolutionary time is measured, we have only just turned up and have hardly had time to catch breath, still marveling at… — 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
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