If an idea cannot move on its own, pushing it doesn't help; best to let it lie there. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
On any Tuesday morning, if asked, a good working scientist will tell you with some self-satisfaction that the affairs of his field… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
I can say, if I like, that social insects behave like the working parts of an immense central nervous system: the termite… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The commas are the most useful and usable of all the stops. It is highly important to put them in place as… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
It is when physicians are bogged down by their incomplete technologies, by the innumerable things they are obliged to do in medicine… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
It is almost always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a period. The period tells you that that is… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Perhaps the safest thing to do at the outset, if technology permits, is to send music. This language may be the best… — 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… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Things are bound to begin happening if you've got your wits about you. You create the lucky accidents. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
If we have learned anything at all in this century, it is that all new technologies will be put to use, sooner… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
We hanker to go on, even in the face of plain evidence that long, long lives are not necessarily pleasurable in the… — 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
I am entitled to say, if I like, that awareness exists in all the individual creatures on the planet-worms, sea urchins, gnats,… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
When committees gather, each member is necessarily an actor, uncontrollably acting out the part of himself, reading the lines that identify him,… — 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
Exclamation points are the most irritating of all. Look! they say, look at what I just said! How amazing is my thought!… — 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
