#us

Human language... prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#human #human language #language #matter #prevents

I don't think that the permanence of the individual human soul is an indispensable part of religious thought. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#human soul #i #indispensable #individual #individual human

I don't want to be reincarnated, that's for sure. When you've had rewarding experiences in your life - a loving family, friends - you don't need additional reassurances that you're going to do something with a new cast of characters. I'd just as soon pass. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#cast #characters #experiences #family #friends

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

Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#become #evidence #eye #good #i

If you want to use a cliche you must take full responsibility for it yourself and not try to fob it off on anon., or on society. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#cliche #full #must #off #responsibility

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#around #beast #begin #bits #calculating

My father was a doctor, and I admired him and got along well with him. He took me with him on house calls. We were living in Flushing, which was then a sleepy village of 25,000 - before the subway got there. I've been sure I wanted to be a doctor since I was about 12. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#admired #along #been #before #calls

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#being #contented #existing #fact #here

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