Quotessence
Home / Authors / Lewis Thomas
Lewis Thomas

Lewis Thomas Quotes

Physician

Filter quotes by topic

AllScienceHumansIfsEarthMindThinkingWayCellsKnowsStillsSeemsSpeciesCenturyGenesNeedsTryingBrainCreaturesHuman BeingsLanguage

Famous Lewis Thomas Quotes

“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.”

IfsHumansSelfStatesSeemsFoundNationsLevelsNumbersAliveHeardModernCapableDestructionStructureSurprisePersistenceFollyGenesLarge NumbersHuman SocietySelf Destruction
Author:Lewis Thomas
Create image

“Given the opportunity, under the right conditions, two cells from wildly different sources, a yeast cell, say, and a chicken erythrocyte, will touch, fuse, and the two nuclei will then fuse as well, and the new hybrid cell will now divide into monstrous progeny. Naked cells, lacking self-respect, do not seem to have any sense of self.”

WellsTwoDifferentSelfSeemsOpportunityGivenConditionsSourceNakedCellsSelf RespectChickensDividesLackingMonstrousSense Of SelfHybridFuseNucleusYeastProgeny
Book:A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays
Create image

“Medical knowledge and technical savvy are biodegradable. The sort of medicine that was practiced in Boston or New York or Atlanta fifty years ago would be as strange to a medical student or intern today as the ceremonial dance of a !Kung San tribe would seem to a rock festival audience in Hackensack.”

InspirationalYearsSeemsWould BeTodayAudienceRocksNew YorkStudentsStrangeYears AgoMedicineDanceMedicalFiftyTribesBostonFestivalsAtlantaSavvyBiodegradableMedical Knowledge
Author:Lewis Thomas
Create image

“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
Create image

“When committees gather, each member is necessarily an actor, uncontrollably acting out the part of himself, reading the lines that identify him, asserting his identity.... We are designed, coded, it seems, to place the highest priority on being individuals, and we must do this first, at whatever cost, even if it means disability for the group.”

IfsFirstsMeanSeemsReadingActorsIndividualLinesActingGroupsIdentityCostMembersHighestPrioritiesDisabilityCommitteesActing Out
Author:Lewis Thomas
Create image