Lewis Thomas Quotes

Great scientific contributions have been techniques.

A great scientist is more open to a new idea than almost anybody.

None of the great discoveries was made by a 'specialist' or a 'researcher'.

You become an expert by working hard. We've got fantastic museums, collections and antique shows. You can go and just start looking. That's the great thing about knowledge. If you collect Doulton figures, you know about the rare ones.

People who are constantly looking for the opportunity to do something new are also people who are not going to be helped by having job titles - job titles create expectations of specialization and focus which don't map really well to creating the best possible experience for your customers.

In the 1970s, what I, as a young foreign student studying in the United States, found most dynamic, exciting and impressive about this country is what much of the world continues to value most about the U.S. today: its open intellectual culture, its great universities, its capacity for discovery and innovation.

In science, it is rare that a transformational change occurs during our lifetimes.

Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of science, just as it is to its more widely acknowledged beneficiaries - the arts and humanities.

Vince or Brad or Benicio would say, Maybe we should try this, and Guy was open to changes.

You don't read in your own field. You read in that field when you're young, so that you can learn.

One of the challenges of innovation is figuring out how to wipe your mind clean about what you should be doing at any given moment, and not having a religious attachment to what's gotten you there thus far.

While it is quite reasonable for scientists to be skeptical of new ideas that do not fit within the accepted realm of scientific knowledge, the best science often emerges from situations where results carefully obtained do not fit within the accepted paradigms.

It is sometimes important for science to know how to forget the things she is surest of.

The power to question is the basis of all human progress.

You can't start a movie by having the attitude that the script is finished, because if you think the script is finished, your movie is finished before the first day of shooting.

The true worth of an experimenter consists in his pursuing not only what he seeks in his experiment, but also what he did not seek.

As soon as science has solved one problem, new ones arise. This is the essence of science, and it applies, of course, also to the field of essential oils.

Science moves fastest when there's plenty of debate and controversy.

I think we always move from imitation to assimilation to innovation, but I can't name you 20 people outside those we've already recognized who ever got to point three: innovation.

One can not impede scientific progress.

Research has been called good business, a necessity, a gamble, a game. It is none of these - it's a state of mind.

Entrepreneurs have a great ability to create change, be flexible, build companies and cultivate the kind of work environment in which they want to work.

We especially need imagination in science.

When you make new musicals, you have the great freedom and the great burden that it can be changed.

We live in an age of universal investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements.