Lewis Thomas Quotes

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Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.

Lewis Thomas

Thinking, Facts, Surprise

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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A lot of people fear death because they think that so overwhelming an experience has to be painful, but I've seen quite a few deaths, and, with one exception, I've never known anyone to undergo anything like agony. That's amazing when you think about it. I mean, how complicated the mechanism is that's being taken apart.

Lewis Thomas

Taken, Mean, Thinking

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Mistakes are at the very base of human thought, embedded there, feeding the structure like root nodules. If we were not provided with the knack for being wrong, we could never get anything useful done. We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives, and the wrong choices have to be made as often as the right ones. We get along in life this way.

Lewis Thomas

Life, Mistake, Creativity

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.

Lewis Thomas

Real, Science, Dna

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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Science will...produce the data..., but never the
full meaning. For perceiving real significance, we
shall need...most of all the brains of poets, [and]
also those of artists, musicians, philosophers,
historians, writers in general.

Lewis Thomas

Real, Artist, Data

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Science is founded on uncertainty. Each time we learn something new and surprising, the astonishment comes with the realization that we were wrong before.

Lewis Thomas

Learning, Science, Realization

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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 the act of learning all the way.

Lewis Thomas

Science, Understanding, Trying

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We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still.

Lewis Thomas

Life, Death, Fear

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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As a people, we have become obsessed with Health. There is something fundamentally, radically unhealthy about all this. We do not seem to be seeking more exuberance in living as much as staving off failure, putting off dying. We have lost all confidence in the human body.

Lewis Thomas

Health, People, Dying

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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We owe our lives to the sun... How is it, then, that we feel no gratitude?

Lewis Thomas

Life, Gratitude, Earth Day

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There's really no such thing as the agony of dying. I'm quite sure that pain is shut off at the moment of death. You see, something happens when the body knows it's about to go. Peptide hormones are released by cells in the hypothalamus and pituitary gland. Endorphins. They attach themselves to the cells responsible for feeling pain.

Lewis Thomas

Pain, Cells, Agony

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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.

Lewis Thomas

Space, Musical, Would Be

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We leave traces of ourselves wherever we go, on whatever we touch.

Lewis Thomas

Reality, Goes On

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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The need to make music, and to listen to it, is universally expressed by human beings. I cannot imagine, even in our most primitive times, the emergence of talented painters to make cave paintings without there having been, near at hand, equally creative people making song. It is, like speech, a dominant aspect of human biology.

Lewis Thomas

Song, Hands, People

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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We do not understand much of anything, from... the "big bang" , all the way down to the particles in the atoms of a bacterial cell. We have a wilderness of mystery to make our way through in the centuries ahead.

Lewis Thomas

Science, Cells, Bangs

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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 the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.

Lewis Thomas

Change, Music, Unique

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves... They do everything but watch television.

Lewis Thomas

Children, War, Army

"A Long Line of Cells: Collected Essays".

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If we had better hearing, and could discern the descants of sea birds, the rhythmic tympani of schools of mollusks, or even the distant harmonics of midges hanging over meadows in the sun, the combined sound might lift us off our feet.

Lewis Thomas

School, Sea, Feet

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.

Lewis Thomas

Music, Effort, Brain

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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As evolutionary time is measured, we have only just turned up and have hardly had time to catch breath, still marveling at our thumbs, still learning to use the brand-new gift of language. Being so young, we can be excused all sorts of folly and can permit ourselves the hope that someday, as a species, we will begin to grow up.

Lewis Thomas

Growing Up, Learning, Science

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

Lewis Thomas

Lying, Moving, Ideas

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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For total greed, rapacity, heartlessness, and irresponsibility there is nothing to match a nation.

Lewis Thomas

Greed, Nations, Heartlessness

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. ... It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun

Lewis Thomas

Distance, Moon, Self

The Lives of a Cell "The World's Biggest Membrane" (1974)

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A multitude of bees can tell the time of day, calculate the geometry of the sun's position, argue about the best location for the next swarm. Bees do a lot of close observing of other bees; maybe they know what follows stinging and do it anyway.

Lewis Thomas

Next, Location, Sun

Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam

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Perhaps the safest thing to do at the outset, if technology permits, is to send music. This language may be the best we have for explaining what we are like to others in space, with least ambiguity. I would vote for Bach, all of Bach, streamed out into space, over and over again. We would be bragging of course, but it is surely excusable to put the best possible face on at the beginning of such an acquaintance. We can tell the harder truths later.

Lewis Thomas

Technology, Space, Would Be

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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Born: November 25, 1913
Died: December 3, 1993
Occupation: Physician
Cite this Page: Citation

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