The need to make music, and to listen to it, is universally expressed by human beings. I cannot imagine, even in our most primitive times, the emergence of talented painters to make cave paintings without there having been, near at hand, equally creative people making song. It is, like speech, a dominant aspect of human biology.
Lewis ThomasAs evolutionary time is measured, we have only just turned up and have hardly had time to catch breath, still marveling at our thumbs, still learning to use the brand-new gift of language. Being so young, we can be excused all sorts of folly and can permit ourselves the hope that someday, as a species, we will begin to grow up.
Lewis ThomasI don't think that the permanence of the individual human soul is an indispensable part of religious thought.
Lewis ThomasIt's just plain learning something that you didn't know. There is a real aesthetic experience in being dumbfounded.
Lewis Thomas