The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand. Lewis Thomas More Quotes by Lewis Thomas More Quotes From Lewis Thomas Society evolves not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other. Lewis Thomas individual society unique The commas are the most useful and usable of all the stops. It is highly important to put them in place as you go along. If you try to come back after doing a paragraph and stick them in the various spots that tempt you you will discover that they tend to swarm like minnows into sorts of crevices whose existence you hadn't realized and before you know it the whole long sentence becomes immobilized and lashed up squirming in commas. Better to use them sparingly, and with affection, precisely when the need for each one arises, nicely, by itself. Lewis Thomas important writing long 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 glimpse hiking We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still. Lewis Thomas fear life death In real life, every field of science is incomplete, and most of them - whatever the record of accomplishment during the last 200 years - are still in their very earliest stages. Lewis Thomas accomplishment real years The greatest single achievement of nature to date was surely the invention of the molecule DNA. Lewis Thomas dna nature science 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 music life science We owe our lives to the sun... How is it, then, that we feel no gratitude? Lewis Thomas earth-day gratitude life 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. Lewis Thomas dna party sea Science is founded on uncertainty. Each time we learn something new and surprising, the astonishment comes with the realization that we were wrong before. Lewis Thomas learning realization science All of today's DNA, strung through all the cells of the earth, is simply an extension and elaboration of [the] first molecule. Lewis Thomas dna cells science 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. Lewis Thomas nature teaching science The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human ignorance Lewis Thomas accomplishment ignorance discovery Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves... They do everything but watch television. Lewis Thomas army war children 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? Lewis Thomas real truth lying Montaigne simply turns his mind loose and writes whatever he feels like writing. Mostly, he wants to say that reason is not a special, unique gift of human beings, marking us off from the rest of nature. Lewis Thomas nature writing science Good science is done by being curious in general, by asking questions all around, by acknowledging the likelihood of being wrong and taking this in good humor for granted, by having a deep fondness for nature, and by being made jumpy and nervous by ignorance. Lewis Thomas asking-questions ignorance motivational The human mind is not meant to be governed, certainly not by any book of rules yet written; it is supposed to run itself, and we are obliged to follow it along, trying to keep up with it as best we can. Lewis Thomas mind running book We leave traces of ourselves wherever we go, on whatever we touch. Lewis Thomas goes-on reality We habitually engage in meddling with nature. Until this century most of this meddling was good. Witness the preservation of the European countryside. But since then we've smoked it up and littered it and dumped too much in too many waters. I don't think it's our privilege to behave this way. Lewis Thomas privilege water thinking
