#our

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

#about #along #behaviour #cloning #computer

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

#ants #armies #beings #capture #ceaselessly

Given the opportunity, under the right conditions, two cells from wildly different sources, a yeast cell, say, and a chicken erythrocyte, will touch, fuse, and the two nuclei will then fuse as well, and the new hybrid cell will now divide into monstrous progeny. Naked cells, lacking self-respect, do not seem to have any sense of self. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#cell #cells #chicken #conditions #different

In the fields I know best, among the life sciences, it is required that the most expert and sophisticated minds be capable of changing course - often with a great lurch - every few years. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#best #capable #changing #course #every

Our behavior toward each other is the strangest, most unpredictable, and most unaccountable of all the phenomena with which we are obliged to live. In all of nature, there is nothing so threatening to humanity as humanity itself. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#each #humanity #itself #live #most

We can take some gratification at having come a certain distance in just a few thousand years of our existence as language users, but it should be a deeper satisfaction, even an exhilaration, to recognize that we have such a distance still to go. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#come #deeper #distance #even #exhilaration

I understand what it's like to come with your family, and to uproot yourself and come to another culture. You need a lot of support. People say, 'She's got her daughter; she's got her husband.' Yeah, but she hasn't got anyone else. ↗

— Emma Thompson

#anyone #come #culture #daughter #else

The only way you can have it all is by delegating all the running of the home to other people - which I don't ever want to do... So you do it yourself, and it takes time and energy and effort. And if you give it the time, it's profoundly enjoyable. ↗

— Emma Thompson

#energy #enjoyable #ever #give #home

Though all afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure. ↗

— David Viscott

#because #cure #discover #disease #evils

And when we draw lines in the sand with regard to certain basic things that are vital to our interest and to the interest of democracy and our friends around the world, we have to be willing to back that up. ↗

— Fred Thompson

#back #basic #basic things #certain #democracy