Lewis Thomas - Life Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

View all Lewis Thomas Quotes
I can think of a few microorganisms, possibly the tubercle bacillus, the syphilis spirochete, the malarial parasite, and a few others, that have a selective advantage in their ability to infect human beings, but there is nothing to be gained, in an evolutionary sense, by the capacity to cause illness or death. Pathogenicity may be something of a disadvantage for most microbes, carrying lethal risks far more frightening to them than to us. The man who catches a meningococcus is in considerably less danger for his life, even without chemotherapy, than meningococci with the bad luck to catch a man.

Lewis Thomas
It is not a simple life to be a single cell, although I have no right to say so, having been a single cell so long ago myself that I have no memory at all of that stage of my life.

Lewis Thomas
The gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest of life.

Lewis Thomas
Maybe there is a single spot, just one, where living organisms are holed up. Maybe so, but if so this would be the strangest thing of all, absolutely incomprehensible. For we are not familiar with this kind of living. We do not have solitary, isolated creatures. It is beyond our imagination to conceive of a single form of life that exists alone and independent, unattached to other forms.

Lewis Thomas
The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled.

Lewis Thomas
The life of the planet began the long, slow process of modulating and regulating the physical conditions of the planet. The oxygen in today's atmosphere is almost entirely the result of photosynthetic living, which had its start with the appearance of blue-green algae among the microorganisms.

Lewis Thomas
We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language... We have affection. We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a "common goal" of nature as I can guess at. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we have music.

Lewis Thomas
There is really no such creature as a single individual; he has no more life of his own than a cast-off cell marooned from the surface of your skin.

Lewis Thomas
Altruism has always been one of biology's deep mysteries. Why should any animal, off on its own…choose to give up its life in aid of someone else?

Lewis Thomas
Selfness is an essential fact of life. The thought of nonselfness, precise sameness is terrifying.

Lewis Thomas