Quotessence
Home / Authors / Lewis Thomas
Lewis Thomas

Lewis Thomas Quotes

Physician

Filter quotes by topic

AllScienceHumansIfsEarthMindThinkingWayCellsKnowsStillsSeemsSpeciesCenturyGenesNeedsTryingBrainCreaturesHuman BeingsLanguage

Famous Lewis Thomas Quotes

“Maybe there is a single spot, just one, where living organisms are holed up. Maybe so, but if so this would be the strangest thing of all, absolutely incomprehensible. For we are not familiar with this kind of living. We do not have solitary, isolated creatures. It is beyond our imagination to conceive of a single form of life that exists alone and independent, unattached to other forms.”

IfsKindWould BeFormImaginationCreaturesIndependentFamiliarSpotsJust OneIsolatedSolitaryOrganismsLiving Organisms
Author:Lewis Thomas
Create image

“I am a member of a fragile species, still new to the earth, the youngest creatures of any scale, here only a few moments as evolutionary time is measured, a juvenile species, a child of a species. We are only tentatively set in place, error prone, at risk of fumbling, in real danger at the moment of leaving behind only a thin layer of of our fossils, radioactive at that.”

ChildrenStillsRealMomentsEarthBehindsRiskDangerCreaturesMembersErrorsSpeciesLeavingScalesFragileLayersFossilsJuvenile
Book:Fragile Species
Create image

“I am entitled to say, if I like, that awareness exists in all the individual creatures on the planet-worms, sea urchins, gnats, whales, subhuman primates, superprimate humans, the lot. I can say this because we do not know what we are talking about: consciousness is so much a total mystery for our own species that we cannot begin to guess about its existence in others.”

IfsKnowsHumansI CanScienceIndividualExistenceConsciousnessTalkingKnowledgeMysterySeaAwarenessPlanetsCreaturesSpeciesEntitledWormsWhalesPrimatesGnats
Book:A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays
Create image