We're as clever as we think we are, but we'll be a lot cleverer when we learn to use not just one… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Good applied science in medicine, as in physics, requires a high degree of certainty about the basic facts at hand, and especially… — 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
It is the very strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be at the center of science teaching. There… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
“It is in our collective behavior that we are the most mysterious. We won't be able to construct machines like ourselves until… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
“Not all social animals are social with the same degree of commitment. In some species, the members are so tied to each… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
We need science, more and better science, not for its technology, not for leisure, not even for health or longevity, but for… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Montaigne simply turns his mind loose and writes whatever he feels like writing. Mostly, he wants to say that reason is not… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Animals, even plants, lie to each other all the time, and we could restrict the research to them, putting off the real… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Much of today's public anxiety about science is the apprehension that we may forever be overlooking the whole by an endless, obsessive… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
We are at our human finest, dancing with our minds, when there are more choices than two. Sometimes there are ten, even… — 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
Very few recognize science as the high adventure it really is, the wildest of all explorations ever taken by human beings, the… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The greatest achievements in the science of this [twentieth] century are themselves the sources of more puzzlement than human beings have ever… — 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
Cats - a standing rebuke to behavioural scientists . . . least human of all creatures. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The central task of science is to arrive, stage by stage, at a clearer comprehension of nature, but this does not at… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
“Perhaps it is in this respect that language differs most sharply from other biologic systems for communication. Ambiguity seems to be an… — 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
“It is hard to feel affection for something as totally impersonal as the atmosphere, and yet there it is, as much a… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
“Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
Science will...produce the data..., but never the full meaning. For perceiving real significance, we shall need...most of all the brains of poets,… — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The most solid piece of scientific truth I know of is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature. — Lewis Thomas Copy Share Image
The body of science is not, as it is sometimes thought, a huge coherent mass of facts, neatly arranged in sequence, each… — 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
![“The greatest achievements in the science of this [twentieth] century…” quote by Lewis Thomas](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/0f5/lewis-thomas-2299_accounts_the-greatest-achievements-in-the-science_2406887.jpg)
