Famous Quotes

"There's really no such thing as the agony of dying. I'm quite sure that pain is shut off at the moment of death. You see, something happens when the body knows it's about to go. Peptide hormones are released by cells in the hypothalamus and pituitary gland. Endorphins. They attach themselves to the cells responsible for feeling pain."

Lewis Thomas on Death

More quotes about Death

• "A man who won't die for something is not fit to live."

  Martin Luther King, Jr. on Death

• "To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent."

  Buddha on Death

• "The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."

  Albert Einstein on Death

• "The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."

  Mark Twain on Death

• "Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see."

  Helen Keller on Death

More quotes by Lewis Thomas

• "A lot of people fear death because they think that so overwhelming an experience has to be painful, but I've seen quite a few deaths, and, with one exception, I've never known anyone to undergo anything like agony. That's amazing when you think about it. I mean, how complicated the mechanism is that's being taken apart."

• "A multitude of bees can tell the time of day, calculate the geometry of the sun's position, argue about the best location for the next swarm. Bees do a lot of close observing of other bees maybe they know what follows stinging and do it anyway."

• "I won't compare ants and people, but ants give us a useful model of how single members of a community can become so organized that they end up resembling, in effect, one big collective brain. Our own exploding population and communication technology are leading us that way."

• "Survival, in the cool economics of biology, means simply the persistence of one's own genes in the generations to follow."

• "A lot of people fear death because they think that so overwhelming an experience has to be painful, but I've seen quite a few deaths, and, with one exception, I've never known anyone to undergo anything like agony. That's amazing when you think about it. I mean, how complicated the mechanism is that's being taken apart."