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We are endowed with genes which code out our reaction to beavers and otters, maybe our reaction to each other as well.

— Lewis Thomas The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

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More quotes by Lewis Thomas

Everything here is alive thanks to the living of everything else.

The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

The future is too interesting and dangerous to be entrusted to any predictable, reliable agency.

The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974)

Left to ourselves, mechanistic and autonomic, we hanker for friends.

The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

Usefulness may turn out to be the hardest test of fitness for survival, more important than aggression, more effective, in the long run, than grabbiness.

The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

You can’t do this and keep a straight face.

The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Lewis Thomas (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.