"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 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
posted in Science
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
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"Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century."
-Bertrand Russell
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"Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art."
-Will Durant
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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
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"False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness."
-Charles Darwin
ScienceView Quote
"Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature."
-Jacob Bronowski
ScienceView Quote
"Reason, observation, and experience the holy trinity of science."
-Robert Green Ingersoll
ScienceView Quote