"The Long Habit"
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We hanker to go on, even in the face of plain evidence that long, long lives are not necessarily pleasurable in the kind of society we have arranged thus far. We will be lucky if we can postpone the search for new technologies for a while, until we have discovered some satisfactory things to do with the extra time.
— Lewis Thomas
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "We hanker to go on, even in the face of plain evidence that long, long lives are not necessarily pleasurable in the kind of society we have arranged thus far. We will be lucky if we can postpone the search for new technologies for a while, until we have discovered some satisfactory things to do with the extra time." in the context of ""The Long Habit"" to mean that wisdom is timeless.
Source: Wikiquote: "Lewis Thomas" (Quotes, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974))
The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
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About Lewis Thomas
Lewis Thomas (25 November 1913 - 3 December 1993) was a physician, author, administrator, educator, policy advisor and researcher. He served as a Dean of Yale Medical School, Dean of the New York University School of Medicine and President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute.
About Lewis Thomas
Lewis Thomas (25 November 1913 - 3 December 1993) was a physician, author, administrator, educator, policy advisor and researcher. He served as a Dean of Yale Medical School, Dean of the New York University School of Medicine and President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute.
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