"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
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"A lot of people fear death because they think that so overwhelming an experience has to be painful, but I've seen quite a few deaths, and, with one exception, I've never known anyone to undergo anything like agony. That's amazing when you think about it. I mean, how complicated the mechanism is that's being taken apart.“
-Lewis Thomas
posted in Experience
Other Quotes by Lewis Thomas
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"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
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"It evolved from my experience in the fifties, growing up during the McCarthy era, and hearing a lot of assumptions that America was wonderful and Communism was terrible."
-Warren Farrell
ExperienceView Quote
"I feel responsible that everyone has a really wonderful experience and to do the best work possible, and to always know my lines and to always be on time and to bring a level to the show in terms of quality that other people will follow."
-Julianna Margulies
ExperienceView Quote
"Acting is not a mystery. There's nothing that I know that other actors don't know. We all act, we're all actors, we all know the same thing. The only thing that separates us is experience."
-Vincent D'Onofrio
ExperienceView Quote
"Many children are natural fantasists, I think, perhaps because their imaginations have yet to be clobbered into submission by experience."
-David Mitchell
ExperienceView Quote
"I got pregnant at 40 by surprise. It's funny, because when we found out we were pregnant, I said, 'Okay, let's experience that.' You just have to just go with it because it's rare."
-Julianna Margulies
ExperienceView Quote
"At our best, it's a good experience but we do 22 episodes a year, so there are some clunkers."
-Vincent D'Onofrio
ExperienceView Quote