Science Quote by Lewis Thomas

A cliche is easy precisely because it comes pre-owned, a phrase with the fingerprints wiped off. Lewis Thomas, the rare scientist who wrote like an essayist, is calling out that laundering of authorship. His target isn’t just sloppy prose; it’s the moral dodge embedded in prefab language. When you “fob it off on anon., or on society,” you’re pretending the words arrived from the weather, not from you. The sentence is a quiet indictment of the passive voice of culture: no one chooses the phrase, everyone repeats it, and accountability dissolves into the crowd.

The sting is in “full responsibility.” Thomas frames a stylistic choice as an ethical one. Use the cliche if you must, but sign your name to the laziness, the sentimentality, the ready-made worldview it smuggles in. Cliches aren’t neutral; they’re tiny, portable theories about how life works. “Boys will be boys” isn’t just tired, it’s an alibi. “It is what it is” isn’t just resigned, it’s a decision to stop thinking.

Coming from a scientist, the line carries a laboratory rigor applied to language. Science demands provenance: where did this claim come from, who made it, can you stand behind it? Thomas extends that standard to writing and, by extension, to public reasoning. If you’re going to borrow the collective script, he suggests, at least admit you’re reading from it. The alternative is ventriloquism: letting “society” talk through you while you pretend you’re not holding the dummy.