When committees gather, each member is necessarily an actor, uncontrol…

Lewis Thomas
101 citations
When committees gather, each member is necessarily an actor, uncontrollably acting out the part of himself, reading the lines that identify him, asserting his identity.... We are designed, coded, it seems, to place the highest priority on being individuals, and we must do this first, at whatever cost, even if it means disability for the group.
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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 (1990). A Long Line of Cells Collected … ▶
It hurts the spirit, somehow, to read the word environments, when the plural means that there are so many alternatives there to be sorted through, as in a market, and voted on. ✨ Lewis Thomas (1990). … ▶
Most of the time I've worked in labs if I didn't encounter something in a week entirely unexpected and surprising I'd consider it a lost week. Lots of that is due to mistakes and stupidity, but it co … ▶
Left to ourselves, mechanistic and autonomic, we hanker for friends. ✨ Lewis Thomas (1990). A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays
We can take some gratification at having come a certain distance in just a few thousand years of our existence as language users, but it should be a deeper satisfaction, even an exhilaration, to reco … ▶

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