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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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“It is hard to feel affection for something as totally impersonal as the atmosphere, and yet there it is, as much a part and product of life as wine and bread. Taken all in al, the sky is a miraculous achievement. It works, and for what it is designed to accomplish it is as infallible as anything in nature. I doubt whether any of us could think of a way to improve on it, beyond maybe shifting a local cloud from here to there on occasion. The word 'chance' does not serve to account well for structures of such magnificence... We should credit it for what it is: for sheer size and perfection of function, it is far and away the grandest product of collaboration in all of nature. It breathes for us, and it does another thing for our pleasure. Each day, millions of meteorites fall against the outer limits of the membrane and are burned to nothing by the friction. Without this shelter, our surface would long since have become the pounded powder of the moon. Even though our receptors are not sensitive enough to hear it, there is comfort in knowing the sound is there overhead, like the random noise of rain on the roof at night.”

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Book:The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
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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, filled to overbrimming as we are with questions, and naturally talented as we are for the asking of clear questions, and then for us to do nothing about, or worse, to try to suppress the questions.”

TryingSeemsScienceClearSceneAskingFilledCuriosityOffense
Book:A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays
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“The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature... It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of twentieth-century science to the human intellect.”

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Book: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.”

StillsUseYoungScienceLanguageGrowsGrowing UpLearningEvolutionBreathsSpeciesBrandsFollySomedayPermitThumbsMeasurementBrand NewMarveling
Author:Lewis Thomas
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“Animals, even plants, lie to each other all the time, and we could restrict the research to them, putting off the real truth about ourselves for the several centuries we need to catch our breath. What is it that enables certain flowers to resemble nubile insects, or opossums to play dead, or female fireflies to change the code of their flashes in order to attract, and then eat, males of a different species?”

NeedsDifferentRealPlayTruthScienceLyingCertainOrderAnimalCenturyFlowerResearchFemaleBreathsPlantSpeciesMalesCodeFlashInsectsFireflyReal Truth
Book:Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony
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“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
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“It is the very strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be at the center of science teaching. There are more than seven-times-seven types of ambiguity in science, awaiting analysis. The poetry of Wallace Stevens is crystal-clear alongside the genetic code.”

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Book:Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony
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“The greatest achievements in the science of this [twentieth] century are themselves the sources of more puzzlement than human beings have ever experienced. Indeed, it is likely that the twentieth century will be looked back at as the time when science provided the first close glimpse of the profundity of human ignorance. We have not reached solutions; we have only begun to discover how to ask questions.”

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Author:Lewis Thomas
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“...the life of the planet began the long, slow process of modulating and regulating the physical conditions of the planet. The oxygen in today's atmosphere is almost entirely the result of photosynthetic living, which had its start with the appearance of blue-green algae among the microorganisms.”

LifeLongTodayScienceProcessResultsConditionsPlanetsBlueGreenAppearanceAtmosphereOxygenAlgaeMicroorganisms
Book:The Nineteenth Cosmos Club Award, Lewis Thomas, M.D.
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“We are at our human finest, dancing with our minds, when there are more choices than two. Sometimes there are ten, even twenty different ways to go, all but one bound to be wrong, and the richness of the selection in such situations can lift us onto totally new ground.”

WayMindHumansTwoDifferentSometimesScienceChoicesSituationTenTwentiesDancingBoundsLiftsDifferent WaysFinestSelectionRichness
Book:A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays
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