E. O. Wilson Quotes
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In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.
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By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
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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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In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.
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Real biologists who actually do the research will tell you that they almost never find a phenomenon, no matter how odd or irrelevant it looks when they first see it, that doesn't prove to serve a function. The outcome itself may be due to small accidents of evolution.
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An individual ant, even though it has a brain about a millionth of a size of a human being's, can learn a maze; the kind we use is a simple rat maze in a laboratory. They can learn it about one-half as fast as a rat.
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Pure knowledge is the ultimate emancipator. It equalizes people and sovereign states, erodes the archaic barriers of superstition and promises to lift the trajectory of cultural evolution. But I do not believe that it can change the ground rules of human behavior or alter the main course of history's predictable trajectory.
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Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds... is not productive.
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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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Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.
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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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True character arises from a deeper well than religion.
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People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.
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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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Companies that are willing to share, to withhold in order to further the growth of the company, willing to try to get a better atmosphere through a demonstration of democratic principles, fairness and cooperation, a better product, those will win in the end.
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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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The central idea of the philosophy of behaviorism, that behavior and the mind have an entirely materialist basis subject to experimental analysis, is fundamentally sound.
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When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
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There can be no purpose more enspiriting than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.
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We are not compelled to believe in biological uniformity in order to affirm human freedom and dignity.
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Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
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The historical circumstance of interest is that the tropical rain forests have persisted over broad parts of the continents since their origins as stronghold of the flowering plants 150 million years ago.
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It's obvious that the key problem facing humanity in the coming century is how to bring a better quality of life - for 8 billion or more people - without wrecking the environment entirely in the attempt.
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In some ways, I had a traditional 'old South' upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an inoculum of the military ethic that is still with me today: honor, duty, loyalty.