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
The central task of science is to arrive, stage by stage, at a clearer comprehension of nature, but this does not at all mean, as it is sometimes claimed to mean, a search for mastery over nature. – Lewis Thomas
The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand. – Lewis Thomas
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