“Life is the strange loop of a snake releasing itself from its own grip, unmouthing an ever fattening tail tapering up to an ever increasingly large mouth, birthing an ever larger tail, filling the universe with this strangeness.”

—  Kevin Kelly

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Life is the strange loop of a snake releasing itself from its own grip, unmouthing an ever fattening tail tapering up t…" by Kevin Kelly?
Kevin Kelly photo
Kevin Kelly 141
American author and editor 1952

Related quotes

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“This museum is a torpedo moving through time, its head the ever-advancing present, its tail the ever-receding past of 50 to 100 years ago.”

Alfred Barr (1902–1981) American art historian

On the Museum of Modern Art, Newsweek (June 1, 1964).

August Kekulé photo

“One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes.”

August Kekulé (1829–1896) German organic chemist

Account of his famous dream of the benzene structure, as quoted in A Life of Magic Chemistry : Autobiographical Reflections of a Nobel Prize Winner (2001) by George A. Olah, p. 54<!-- also partially quoted in Serendipity, Accidental Discoveries in Science (1989) by Royston M. Roberts , pp. 75-81 -->
Context: I was sitting writing on my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation; long rows sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke; and this time also I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis. Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, and then perhaps we shall learn the truth... but let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been put to the proof by the waking understanding.

George F. Kennan photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Strange, that ignorance should be our best happiness in this life, and yet be the one we are ever striving to destroy!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Petula Clark photo

“It was a strange life, I suppose, but it was the only one I’ve ever known. What is a normal childhood anyway?”

Petula Clark (1932) British actress and singer

On being a child star.
Calgary Herald, 14 Feb 2013

Mark Twain photo
Rachel Carson photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“959. Bees that have Honey in their Mouths, have Stings in their Tails.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Related topics