E. O. Wilson Quotes
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By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
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The rules followed are tight enough to produce a broad overlap in the decisions taken by all individuals and hence a convergence powerful enough to be labelled human nature.
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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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Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds... is not productive.
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In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.
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Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.
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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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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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When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
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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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True character arises from a deeper well than religion.
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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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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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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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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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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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Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
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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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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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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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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've found that good dialogue tells you not only what people are saying or how they're communicating but it tells you a great deal - by dialect and tone, content and circumstance - about the quality of the character.
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The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion, whether it's Southern Baptist or Islam or any religion that believes in a supernatural supervalance over humanity.