We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry; we meditate over… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Having long suspected that there was something alive in there, running the place, separate from everything else, absolutely individual and independent, we've… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Society evolves not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other. — 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
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
I don't think that the permanence of the individual human soul is an indispensable part of religious thought. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Altruism has always been one of biology's deep mysteries. Why should any animal, off on its own, specified and labeled by all… — 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
“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
