If we are to be destroyed we will do it ourselves by warfare with thermonuclear weaponry.
Lewis ThomasAll of today's DNA, strung through all the cells of the earth, is simply an extension and elaboration of [the] first molecule.
Lewis ThomasAs 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 ThomasViewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. The photographs show the dry, pounded surface of the moon in the foreground, dry as an old bone. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming, membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos.
Lewis Thomas