#ak

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#because #brains #effort #explain #how

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

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

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 from the progeny of this parent cell that we all take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is in fact a family resemblance. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#cell #fact #family #genes #grasses

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

Very few recognize science as the high adventure it really is, the wildest of all explorations ever taken by human beings, the chance to glimpse things never seen before, the shrewdest maneuver for discovering how the world works. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#before #beings #chance #discovering #ever

We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still. ↗

— Lewis Thomas

#animal #away #creatures #discontent #dying

The ability to speak is a short cut to distinction. It puts a man in the limelight, raises him head and shoulders above the crowd. ↗

— Lowell Thomas

#above #crowd #cut #distinction #head

I do love the idea of being able to take an MP to court for lying. There are ways and means of taking an MP to court just now, but it is very difficult. ↗

— Mark Thomas

#being #court #difficult #i #i do