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#ect

Read through the most famous quotes by topic #ect




Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species. ↗


— Lewis Thomas


#altruism #because #been #confer #continuing

Having long suspected that there was something alive in there, running the place, separate from everything else, absolutely individual and independent, we've celebrated by giving it a real name. My self. ↗


— Lewis Thomas


#alive #celebrated #else #everything #giving

I maintain, despite the moment's evidence against the claim, that we are born and grow up with a fondness for each other, and we have genes for that. We can be talked out of it, for the genetic message is like a distant music, and some of us are hard-of-hearing. Societies are noisy affairs, drowning out the sound of ourselves and our connection. ↗


— Lewis Thomas


#against #born #claim #connection #despite

Most of the time I've worked in labs if I didn't encounter something in a week entirely unexpected and surprising I'd consider it a lost week. Lots of that is due to mistakes and stupidity, but it could open a new line of inquiry. Something really good turns up once in a hundred times, but it makes the whole day worthwhile. ↗


— Lewis Thomas


#could #day #due #encounter #entirely

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


#agency #any #connected #dangerous #entrusted

We are not like the social insects. They have only the one way of doing things and they will do it forever, coded for that way. We are coded differently, not just for binary choices, go or no-go. We can go four ways at once, depending on how the air feels: go, no-go, but also maybe, plus what the hell let's give it a try. ↗


— Lewis Thomas


#also #binary #choices #coded #depending

We live in a dancing matrix of viruses; they dart, rather like bees, from organism to organism, from plant to insect to mammal to me and back again, and into the sea, tugging along pieces of this genome, strings of genes from that, transplanting grafts of DNA, passing around heredity as though at a great party. ↗


— Lewis Thomas


#along #around #back #bees #dancing

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


#brain #brains #clever #collectively #endeavors

Maybe... there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for unlawfully detaining 120 people. Maybe they just got carried away with last year's idea of pre-emptive strikes and thought, 'Let's not wait for an actual crime to occur. Let's get the innocent. ↗


— Mark Thomas


#away #carried #crime #detaining #explanation

We tend to think of politicians as time-servers and slackers. But on those committees they usually have an interest in the subject. And they're quite clever. I've seen them pick people apart. ↗


— Mark Thomas


#clever #committees #i #interest #people






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