"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
"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
posted in Work
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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"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
-Thomas A. Edison
WorkView Quote
"There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time!"
-Coco Chanel
WorkView Quote
"In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you."
-Leo Tolstoy
WorkView Quote
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."
-Woody Allen
WorkView Quote
"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."
-Albert Camus
WorkView Quote
"In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present."
-Lao Tzu
WorkView Quote