"The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency. We need all the fallibility we can get. Most of all, we need to preserve the absolute unpredictability and total improbability of our connected minds. That way we can keep open all the options, as we have in the past.“


-Lewis Thomas

posted in future


The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency. We need all the fallibility we can get. Most of all, we need to preserve the absolute unpredictability and total improbability of our connected minds. That way we can keep open all the options, as we have in the past.

Other Quotes You Might Like

Discover more inspiring quotes from our collection

"Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind."

-Lewis Thomas

workView Quote
"Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television."

-Lewis Thomas

warView Quote
"The most solid piece of scientific truth I know of is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature."

-Lewis Thomas

truthView Quote
"I won't compare ants and people, but ants give us a useful model of how single members of a community can become so organized that they end up resembling, in effect, one big collective brain. Our own exploding population and communication technology are leading us that way."

-Lewis Thomas

technologyView Quote
"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

societyView Quote
"We're as clever as we think we are, but we'll be a lot cleverer when we learn to use not just one brain but to pool huge numbers of brains. We're at a level technologically where we can share information and think collectively about our problems. We do it in science all the time - there's no reason why we can't do it in other endeavors."

-Lewis Thomas

scienceView Quote

More Quotes About future

Explore other inspiring quotes in this category

"I always felt like my future was at stake every time I stepped on stage and that was kind of hair-raising. At some point I just went, don't be frightened, you can't do anything wrong, it's your show."

-Rickie Lee Jones

futureView Quote
"Our challenge for the future is that we realize we are very much a part of the earth's ecosystem, and we must learn to respect and live according to the basic biological laws of nature."

-Jim Fowler

futureView Quote
"There was a certain point in my life where I had to decide that I was going to take my future and Nicole's and not wallow in what happened to me because when you do that, you just keep repeating what's been happening and at some point you have to make a choice."

-Boris Kodjoe

futureView Quote
"If we are to garner sustained U.S. domestic support for future trade agreements, we have to make sure those Americans who have suffered as a consequence of past agreements have an effective social safety net, adjustment assistance, opportunities for retraining and new job creation that enables all Americans to thrive."

-Susan Rice

futureView Quote
"And time itself? Time was a never-ending medium that stretched into the future and the past - except there was no future and no past, but an infinite number of brackets, extending either way, each bracket enclosing its single phase of the Universe."

-Clifford D. Simak

futureView Quote
"The Nuclear Security Summit was President Obama's initiative born out of his vision to leave behind a safer, more prosperous world for the future generation."

-Lee Myung-bak

futureView Quote