"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 Fear
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
Same Category
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"There's no love more intense than the love we have for our kids - and where there is intense love, there is also intense fear lurking beneath the surface."
-Arianna Huffington
FearView Quote
"You don't have to do everything by the time you're 30. Or 40. All you need is a work ethic. It's what allows you to push through moments of disappointment and self-doubt and fear."
-Candace Bushnell
FearView Quote
"I think interviews can be fine. It's just there's this terrible fear of coming off wrongly or saying something that gets taken out of context."
-Nicholas Hoult
FearView Quote
"Don't fear anything for your letters, they are burnt one by one and I hope you do the same with mine."
-Camille Claudel
FearView Quote
"I think, however, that so long as our present economic and national systems continue, scientific research has little to fear."
-John B. S. Haldane
FearView Quote
"Greatness comes from fear. Fear can either shut us down and we go home, or we fight through it."
-Lionel Richie
FearView Quote