E. O. Wilson Quotes
-
There can be no purpose more enspiriting than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.
-
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.
-
I grew up as a Southern Baptist with strict adherence to the Bible, which I read as a youngster.
-
The education of women is the best way to save the environment.
-
Every kid has a bug period... I never grew out of mine.
-
The ant world is a tumult, a noisy world of pheromones being passed back and forth.
-
The genius of human society is in fact the ease with which alliances are formed, broken, and reconstituted, always with strong emotional appeals to rules believed to be absolute.
-
In early history phobias might have provided the extra margin needed to insure survival...
-
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.
-
We are not compelled to believe in biological uniformity in order to affirm human freedom and dignity.
-
Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.
-
The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans.
-
I doubt that most people with short-term thinking love the natural world enough to save it.
-
Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
-
When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
-
Once I feel I'm right, I have enjoyed provoking.
-
We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.
-
Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.
-
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.
-
For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.
-
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.
-
Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it's a map with constant immediate sensory input.
-
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.
-
Competing is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups of selfish individuals.