E. O. Wilson Quotes
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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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There doesn't seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.
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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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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.
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Once I feel I'm right, I have enjoyed provoking.
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For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.
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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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I doubt that most people with short-term thinking love the natural world enough to save it.
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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.
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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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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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Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
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Every kid has a bug period... I never grew out of mine.
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Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it's a map with constant immediate sensory input.
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The ant world is a tumult, a noisy world of pheromones being passed back and forth.
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If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.
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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 education of women is the best way to save the environment.
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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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Piaget, who was originally trained as a biologist, views intellectual development as an interaction of an inherited genetic program with the environment. It is no coincidence that he calls this conception 'genetic epistemology,' in effect the study of the hereditary unfolding of understanding.
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When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
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Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.
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Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.