All Lewis Thomas Quotes
- It is in our collective behavior that we are most mysterious. Behavior
- Altruism has always been one of biology's deep mysteries. Why should any animal, off on its own, specified and labeled by all sorts of signals… Aid
- It is a distortion, with something profoundly disloyal about it, to picture the human being as a teetering, fallible contraption, always needing, watching and patching,… Always Needing
- If an idea cannot move on its own, pushing it doesn't help; best to let it lie there. Best
- It's just plain learning something that you didn't know. There is a real aesthetic experience in being dumbfounded. Aesthetic
- I will confess that I have no more sense of what goes on in the mind of mankind than I have for the mind of… Ant
- The human mind is not meant to be governed, certainly not by any book of rules yet written; it is supposed to run itself, and… Along
- For total greed, rapacity, heartlessness, and irresponsibility there is nothing to match a nation. Greed
- Man is embedded in nature. Embedded
- Given any new technology for transmitting information, we seem bound to use it for great quantities of small talk. We are only saved by music… Any
- The whole dear notion of one's own Self-marvelous old free-willed, free- enterprising, autonomous, independent, isolated island of a Self- is a myth. Autonomous
- We still think of human disease as the work of an organized, modernized kind of demonology, in which the bacteria are the most visible and… Adversaries
- We pass thoughts around, from mind to mind, so compulsively and with such speed that the brains of mankind often appear, functionally, to be undergoing… Appear
- We are built to make mistakes, coded for error. Built
- I don't think that the permanence of the individual human soul is an indispensable part of religious thought. Human
- If we are to be destroyed we will do it ourselves by warfare with thermonuclear weaponry. Destroyed
- At this early stage in our evolution, now through our infancy and into our childhood and then, with luck, our growing up, what our species… All
- We are educated to be amazed by the infinite variety of life forms in nature. We are, I believe, only at the beginning of being… Amazed
- Things are bound to begin happening if you've got your wits about you. You create the lucky accidents. Accidents
- We spend our time sending messages to each other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information. This seems to be our… Biological
- In real life, every field of science is incomplete, and most of them - whatever the record of accomplishment during the last 200 years -… Accomplishment
- On any Tuesday morning, if asked, a good working scientist will tell you with some self-satisfaction that the affairs of his field are nicely in… Affair
- The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most… Better
- Our behavior toward each other is the strangest, most unpredictable, and most unaccountable of all the phenomena with which we are obliged to live. In… All
- The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads,… Along