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Lewis Thomas

Lewis Thomas Quotes

Physician

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Famous Lewis Thomas Quotes

“The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled. It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is a family resemblance.”

LifeScienceEvolutionDiversityBiologyChemistryGenesAstonishingUniformityOrigin Of LifeCommon AncestorUniversal Common Ancestor
Book:The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
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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 build structures for human society never seen before, thoughts never heard before, music never heard before.”

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Author:Lewis Thomas
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“We live in a dancing matrix of viruses; they dart, rather like bees, from organism to organism, from plant to insect to mammal to me and back again, and into the sea, tugging along pieces of this genome, strings of genes from that, transplanting grafts of DNA, passing around heredity as though at a great party.”

PartyPiecesSeaDancingPlantPassingPassingsStringsGenesBeesOrganismsDnaInsectsVirusesBack AgainMammalsHeredityGenomeTuggingGreat Party
Book:A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays
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“I maintain, despite the moment's evidence against the claim, that we are born and grow up with a fondness for each other, and we have genes for that. We can be talked out of it, for the genetic message is like a distant music, and some of us are hard-of-hearing. Societies are noisy affairs, drowning out the sound of ourselves and our connection.”

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Book:Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony
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