E. O. Wilson Quotes
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Because the living environment is what really sustains us.
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I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.
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I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution.
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True character arises from a deeper well than religion.
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I grew up as a Southern Baptist with strict adherence to the Bible, which I read as a youngster.
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Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong.
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We have decommissioned natural selection and must now look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.
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I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people, including fundamentalists, are quite intelligent, many of them are highly educated, and they should be treated with complete respect.
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When you get into the whole field of exploring, probably 90 percent of the kinds of organisms, plants, animals and especially microorganisms and tiny invertebrate animals are unknown. Then you realize that we live on a relatively unexplored plan.
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Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.
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I was a senior in high school when I decided I wanted to work on ants as a career. I just fell in love with them, and have never regretted it.
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In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.
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The two major challenges for the 21st century are to improve the economic situation of the majority and save as much of the planet as we can.
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By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
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Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.
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The commitment must be much deeper - to let no species knowingly die; to take all reasonable action to protect every species and race in perpetuity.
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If someone could actually prove scientifically that there is such a thing as a supernatural force, it would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science. So the notion that somehow scientists are resisting it is ludicrous.
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The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans.
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Ants are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them.
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A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.
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Jehovah had nothing to say to Moses and the others about the care of the planet. He had plenty to say about tribal loyalty and conquest.
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Without a trace of irony I can say I have been blessed with brilliant enemies. I owe them a great debt, because they redoubled my energies and drove me in new directions.
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Secular humanists can sit around and talk about their love of humanity, but it doesn't stack up against a two-millennium-old funeral high mass.
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Well, let me tell you, ants are the dominant insects. They make up as much as a quarter of the biomass of all insects in the world. They are the principal predators. They're the cemetery workers.