Lewis Thomas Quotes About Language

Quotes about: Language

• 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

• Sometimes you get a glimpse of a semicolon coming, a few lines farther on, and it is like climbing a steep path through woods and seeing a wooden bench just at a bend in the road ahead, a place where you can expect to sit for a moment, catching your breath.

  Lewis Thomas

  Climbing, Hiking, Glimpse

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

• We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language. . . . We have affection. We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a 'common goal' of nature as I can guess at.

  Lewis Thomas

  Life, Music, Science

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

• 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”

• The gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest of life.

  Lewis Thomas

  Rest Of Life, Language, Mark

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

• We can take some gratification at having come a certain distance in just a few thousand years of our existence as language users, but it should be a deeper satisfaction, even an exhilaration, to recognize that we have such a distance still to go.

  Lewis Thomas

  Distance, Years, Satisfaction

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

• We are spectacular splendid manifestations of life. We have language. We have affection. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we have music.

  Lewis Thomas

  Affection, Language, Splendid

• The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

  Lewis Thomas

  Hands, Matter, Language

  "A Long Line of Cells: Collected Essays".

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