"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
FutureView Quote
"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
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
"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
"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
"The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers."
-Lewis Thomas
ScienceView Quote
"Survival, in the cool economics of biology, means simply the persistence of one's own genes in the generations to follow."
-Lewis Thomas
CoolView Quote
Same Category
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"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
-George Orwell
FutureView Quote
"Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else's hands, but not you."
-Jim Rohn
FutureView Quote
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
-Eleanor Roosevelt
FutureView Quote
"It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream."
-Edgar Allan Poe
FutureView Quote
"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."
-Marcus Aurelius
FutureView Quote
"Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart."
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
FutureView Quote