#w

We leave traces of ourselves wherever we go, on whatever we touch. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#leave #ourselves #touch #traces #whatever

A lot of people fear death because they think that so overwhelming an experience has to be painful, but I've seen quite a few deaths, and, with one exception, I've never known anyone to undergo anything like agony. That's amazing when you think about it. I mean, how complicated the mechanism is that's being taken apart. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#agony #amazing #anyone #anything #apart

A multitude of bees can tell the time of day, calculate the geometry of the sun's position, argue about the best location for the next swarm. Bees do a lot of close observing of other bees; maybe they know what follows stinging and do it anyway. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#anyway #argue #bees #best #calculate

I suggest that the introductory courses in science, at all levels from grade school through college, be radically revised. Leave the fundamentals, the so-called basics, aside for a while, and concentrate the attention of all students on the things that are not known. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#attention #basics #college #concentrate #courses

As a species, taking all in all, we are still too young, too juvenile, to be trusted. We have spread across the face of the earth in just a few thousand years, no time at all as evolution clocks time, covering all livable parts of the planet, endangering other forms of life, and now threatening ourselves. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#clocks #covering #earth #endangering #evolution

At this early stage in our evolution, now through our infancy and into our childhood and then, with luck, our growing up, what our species needs most of all, right now, is simply a future. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#early #evolution #future #growing #growing up

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

Survival, in the cool economics of biology, means simply the persistence of one's own genes in the generations to follow. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#cool #economics #follow #generations #genes

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