Quote by Lewis Thomas
The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from s

The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand. – Lewis Thomas

Other quotes by Lewis Thomas

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

Category:
War
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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

Category:
Nature
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The dilemma of modern medicine, and the underlying central flaw in medical education and, most of all, in the training of interns, is the irresistible drive to do something, anything. It is expected by patients and too often agreed to by their doctors, in the face of ignorance. – Lewis Thomas

Category:
Education
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Other Quotes from
Language
category

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. – George Orwell

Category:
Language

What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Category:
Language

We have too many high sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them. – Abigail Adams

Category:
Language

Heinrich Heine so loosened the corsets of the German language that today every little salesman can fondle her breasts. – Karl Kraus, translated from German by Harry Zohn

Category:
Language

Random Quotes

Why dont they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth. – Will Rogers

Category:
Learning

The human brain now holds the key to our future. We have to recall the image of the planet from outer space: a single entity in which air, water, and continents are interconnected. That is our home. – David Suzuki

Category:
Future

How wonderfully these pictures have caught the look of tentative spring—spring waiting for a single day to burst into living green. – Alice Morse Earle, “In Lilac Tide,” Old-Time Gardens Newly Set Forth, 1901

Category:
Springtime

Young people know how important it is for dads to be involved in their lives. As I travel the country and talk with students, some of them tell me that their lives would be totally different if their father was around. – Arne Duncan

Category:
Travel