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Portrait of Lewis Thomas

Lewis Thomas

(1913–1993) Medical Author

173 quotes in 1125 categories

Lewis Thomas was a medical author, best known for A general theory of love.

Quick Facts About Lewis Thomas

Born: November 25, 1913
Died: December 3, 1993
Profession: Medical Author
Notable works: A general theory of love

About Lewis Thomas

Lewis Thomas was an American physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and biologist. He was a longtime contributor to The New England Journal of Medicine, and his essays were collected in several books. He received National Book Award in Arts and Letters and The Sciences for The Lives of a Cell.

Biography source: Wikipedia

Quotes by Lewis Thomas

“We are endowed with genes which code out our reaction to beavers and otters, maybe our reaction to each other as well.…

Conscious mind

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We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language. . . . We have affection. We have genes for usefulness,…

Affection

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“It is not a simple thing to decide where we fit, for at one time or another in our lives we manage…

Science

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It is in our genes to understand the universe if we can, to keep trying even if we cannot, and to be…

Education

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If an idea cannot move on its own, pushing it doesn't help; best to let it lie there.

Helping

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Left to ourselves, mechanistic and autonomic, we hanker for friends.

Friendship

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I do not agree with this century's fashion of running down the human species as a failed try, a doomed sport. At…

Adolescence

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It would seem to me... an offense against nature, for us to come on the same scene endowed as we are with…

Asking

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The drive to be useful is encoded in our genes. But when we gather in very large numbers, as in the modern…

Alive

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I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach into outer space on the Voyager spacecraft. But that would be boasting.

Boast

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“Nature abhors a long silence.”

Long silence

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“The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency. We need all the fallibility we can…

Psychology

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We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry; we meditate over…

Books

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“The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from…

Astonishing

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Having long suspected that there was something alive in there, running the place, separate from everything else, absolutely individual and independent, we've…

Absolutely

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We are told that the trouble with modern man is that he has been trying to detach himself from nature... In this…

Bird

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“I have always had a bad memory, as far back as I can remember.”

Bad memories

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All of today's DNA, strung through all the cells of the earth, is simply an extension and elaboration of [the] first molecule.

Cells

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The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance

20th century

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“Worrying is the most natural and spontaneous of all human functions. It is time to acknowledge this, perhaps even to learn to…

Anxiety

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Man is embedded in nature.

Embedded

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In the fields I know best, among the life sciences, it is required that the most expert and sophisticated minds be capable…

Best

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The greatest single achievement of nature to date was surely the invention of the molecule DNA.

Achievement

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Any species capable of producing, at this earliest, juvenile stage of its development... the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, cannot be all…

Bad

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We are built to make mistakes, coded for error.

Built

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Lewis Thomas by topic

Science (54) Nature (35) Life (27) Time (25) Humans (25) Ifs (18) Psychology (14) Earth (14) Way (13) Thinking (13) Mind (13) Species (11) Music (11) Biology (11) Cells (10)