Lewis Thomas Quotes

It is as deadly for a mind to have a system as to have none. Therefore it will have to decide to combine both.

You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.

Fluid intelligence is not a Big Five personality trait: It's a measurement of one's ability to rapidly learn and apply a rule set. As an entrepreneur, you're rapidly dealing with different issues, and your ability to switch from one issue to another is very important.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

I do a great deal of work with young children, and if you give a child a problem, he may come up with a highly original solution, because he doesn't have the established route to it.

No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.

I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That's why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place, and they're absolutely contradictory.

The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion - these are the most valuable coins of the thinker at work. But in most schools guessing is heavily penalized and is associated somehow with laziness.

Tactical and technical awareness can only improve and sharpen with time.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. That's what you have to do: you have to be confident in your potential and aware of your inexperience.

You're able to see situations over and over again and just become comfortable in different decision-making situations. I think that comes with experience.

Chess is a unique cognitive nexus, a place where art and science come together in the human mind and are then refined and improved by experience.

Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.

If you are going to try and change things, you had better have your wits about you.

After years of having immersed myself in science, I do think that if you master several different ways of thinking, it makes your own thought processes more agile.

To think, analyze and invent, he [Pierre Menard] also wrote me, “are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence. To glorify the occasional fulfillment of this function, to treasure ancient thoughts of others, to remember with incredulous amazement that the doctor universal is thought, is to confess our languor or barbarism. Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe that in the future he will be." (Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote, 1939)

True genius, in strategy or anywhere, lies in self-control, self-mastery, presence of mind, fluidity of thought.

Every man should be capable of all ideas.

Never accept the proposition that just because a solution satisfies a problem, that it must be the only solution.

Thinking is one of the most important weapons in dealing with problems

Clear thinking at the wrong moment can stifle creativity.

Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.

The essence of intelligence would seem to be in knowing when to think and act quickly, and knowing when to think and act slowly.

Chess makes man wiser and clear-sighted.

Chess is a game that benefits people of all ages, especially kids, in any area of life, business, problem solving, and social skills. Chess has the unique ability to combine focus, concentration, imagination, coordination, teamwork, and leadership all at the same time.