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Lewis Thomas Quotes

Doctors, dressed up in one professional costume or another, have been in busy practice since the ear...

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However, I have a stronger hunch that the greatest part of the important biomedical research waiting...

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Survival, in the cool economics of biology, means simply the persistence of one's own genes in the g...

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The dilemma of modern medicine, and the underlying central flaw in medical education and, most of al...

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It is in our genes to understand the universe if we can, to keep trying even if we cannot, and to be...

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Medical knowledge and technical savvy are biodegradable. The sort of medicine that was practiced in ...

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As evolutionary time is measured, we have only just turned up and have hardly had time to catch brea...

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It is not a simple thing to decide where we fit, for at one time or another in our lives we manage t...

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Most things get better by themselves. Most things in fact are better by morning.

The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that mo...

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The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with beha...

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Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as lives...

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The greatest of all the accomplishments of 20th century science has been the discovery of human igno...

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Worrying is the most natural and spontaneous of all human functions. It is time to acknowledge this ...

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The greatest single achievement of nature to date was surely the invention of the molecule DNA.

I am a member of a fragile species, still new to the earth, the youngest creatures of any scale, her...

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Cats - a standing rebuke to behavioural scientists . . . least human of all creatures.

...the life of the planet began the long, slow process of modulating and regulating the physical con...

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Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatur...

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Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, bla...

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The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency. We ...

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We're as clever as we think we are, but we'll be a lot cleverer when we learn to use not just one br...

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We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth’s creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, ...

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I won't compare ants and people, but ants give us a useful model of how single members of a communit...

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Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that the mere fact of our exi...

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Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fac...

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The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

It is hard to feel affection for something as totally impersonal as the atmosphere, and yet there it...

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The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

Perhaps it is in this respect that language differs most sharply from other biologic systems for com...

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The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

It is in our collective behavior that we are the most mysterious. We won't be able to construct mach...

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The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high ...

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The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would...

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Lives of a Cell

Not all social animals are social with the same degree of commitment. In some species, the members a...

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The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

Working on a typewriter by touch, like riding a bicycle or strolling on a path, is best done by not ...

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The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

The individual parts played by other instrumentalists-- crickets or earthworms, for instance-- may n...

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The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

Worrying is the most natural and spontaneous of all human functions. It is time to acknowledge this,...

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The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher

All of today's DNA, strung through all the cells of the earth, is simply an extension and elaboratio...

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The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher

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Lewis Thomas

Physician

Born: 1913-11-25

Died: 1993-12-03

Lewis Thomas (25 November 1913 - 3 December 1993) was a physician, author, administrator, educator, policy advisor and researcher. He served as a Dean of Yale Medical School, Dean of the New York University School of Medicine and President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute.More