Ants Quote by Lewis Thomas

“Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrasment...They do everything but watch television.” quote by Lewis Thomas — Download Open image

“Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrasment...They do everything but watch television.”

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Ants Fungi Human beings Humans Sarcasm Sarcastic Television Watches

More 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. We are stamped with stereotyped, unalterable patterns of response, ready to be released. And the behavior released in us, by such confrontations, is, essentially, a surprised affection. It is compulsory behavior and we can avoid it only by…

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

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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 to organize in every imaginable social arrangement...We have names to label each as self, and we believe without reservation that this system of taxonomy will guarantee the entity, the absolute separateness in each of us, but the mechanism…

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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 enchanted by…

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

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

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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 our worst,…

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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 the curiosity,…

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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 nation-state, we seem capable of levels of folly and self-destruction to be found nowhere else in all of nature. But if we keep at it and keep alive, we are in for one surprise after another. We can…

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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.

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“Nature abhors a 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 get. Most…

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More Ants quotes

Some people are like ants. Give them a warm day and a piece of ground and they start digging. There the similarity ends. Ants keepon digging. Most people don't. They establish contact with the soil, absorb so much vernal vigor that they can't stay in one place, and desert the fork or spade to see how the rhubarb is coming…

Hal Borland

Great God of the Ants, thou hast granted victory to thy servants. I appoint thee honorary Colonel.

Karel Capek

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Pray look upon the plants and birds, the ants, spiders, and bees, and you will see them all exerting their nature, and busy in…

Marcus Aurelius

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People are like ants: Just a few of them give all the orders. And most of them spend their lives getting squashed.

Lauren Oliver

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There's a good case to be made that having fun is a key evolutionary advantage right next to opposable thumbs in terms of importance.…

Raph Koster

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We know of no behavior in ants or any other social insects that can be construed as play.

Bert Holldobler

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Oh, ants, my sisters, good old honeydew-seekers! From close up you are sticky and shiny and gristly; and your nymphs have parasitic red mites stuck to them. You are too intent upon your chewing and gathering to listen to me, but I tell you that despite my warm feelings I really do not like you, and I cannot feel sorry…

William T. Vollmann

Albert and I would spend hours and hours looking at them. Cleo had this big magnifying glass on his desk, and we'd find centipedes and grasshoppers and beetles and potato bugs, ants . . . and put them in a jar and look at them. They have the sweetest little faces and the cutest expressions. After we'd looked at them…

Fannie Flagg

When someone criticizes or disagrees with you, a small ant of hatred and antagonism is born in your heart. If you do not squash that ant at once, it might grow into a snake, or even a dragon.

Rumi

There's a scientific hypothesis that every person's name is a primary suggestive command that contains the entire script of their life in highly concentrated form. . . . According to this point of view, there is only a limited number of names, because society only needs a limited number of human types. Just a few models of worker and warrior…

Victor Pelevin