We are built to make mistakes, coded for error. Lewis Thomas More Quotes by Lewis Thomas More Quotes From Lewis Thomas Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrasment...They do everything but watch television. Lewis Thomas sarcasmsarcasticwatches The central task of science is to arrive, stage by stage, at a clearer comprehension of nature, but this does not at all mean, as it is sometimes claimed to mean, a search for mastery over nature. Lewis Thomas naturesciencemean If we have learned anything at all in this century, it is that all new technologies will be put to use, sooner or later, for better or worse, as it is in our nature to do. Lewis Thomas centurytechnologyuse The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand. Lewis Thomas languagematterhands If you want to use a cliche you must take full responsibility for it yourself and not try to fob it off on anon., or on society. Lewis Thomas responsibilitytryingreality It is a distortion, with something profoundly disloyal about it, to picture the human being as a teetering, fallible contraption, always needing, watching and patching, always on the verge of flapping to pieces. Lewis Thomas flappingpieceshealth It's just plain learning something that you didn't know. There is a real aesthetic experience in being dumbfounded. Lewis Thomas aestheticlearningreal I will confess that I have no more sense of what goes on in the mind of mankind than I have for the mind of an ant. Lewis Thomas antsgoes-onmind It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we all take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is in fact a family resemblance. Lewis Thomas resemblance-iswhalescells Man is embedded in nature. Lewis Thomas embeddednaturemen Given any new technology for transmitting information, we seem bound to use it for great quantities of small talk. We are only saved by music from being overwhelmed by nonsense. Lewis Thomas informationtechnologyuse The whole dear notion of one's own Self-marvelous old free-willed, free- enterprising, autonomous, independent, isolated island of a Self- is a myth. Lewis Thomas independentselfislands We still think of human disease as the work of an organized, modernized kind of demonology, in which the bacteria are the most visible and centrally placed of our adversaries. We assume that they must somehow relish what they do. Lewis Thomas diseasesleepthinking We pass thoughts around, from mind to mind, so compulsively and with such speed that the brains of mankind often appear, functionally, to be undergoing fusion. Lewis Thomas fusionmindbrain The earliest sensation at the onset of illness, often preceding the recognition of identifiable symptoms, is apprehension. Something has gone wrong, and a glimpse of mortality shifts somewhere deep in the mind. It is the most ancient of our fears. Lewis Thomas glimpsegonemind Of all celestial bodies within reach or view, as far as we can see, out to the edge, the most wonderful and marvellous and mysterious is turning out to be our own planet earth. There is nothing to match it anywhere, not yet anyway. Lewis Thomas bodyearthviews As a species, taking all in all, we are still too young, too juvenile, to be trusted. We have spread across the face of the earth in just a few thousand years, no time at all as evolution clocks time, covering all livable parts of the planet, endangering other forms of life, and now threatening ourselves. Lewis Thomas coveringearthyears Survival, in the cool economics of biology, means simply the persistence of one's own genes in the generations to follow. Lewis Thomas persistencesurvivalmean We spend our time sending messages to each other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information. This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with our lives. Lewis Thomas communicationtryingtalking We are spectacular splendid manifestations of life. We have language. We have affection. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we have music. Lewis Thomas affectionsplendidlanguage
