E. O. Wilson Quotes
-
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.
-
For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.
-
America in particular imposes an horrendous burden on the world. We have this wonderful standard of living but it comes at enormous cost.
-
The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.
-
I believe that traditional religious belief and scientific knowledge depict the universe in radically different ways. At the bedrock they are incompatible and mutually exclusive.
-
No barrier stands between the material world of science and the sensibilities of the hunter and the poet.
-
Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.
-
It often occurs to me that if, against all odds, there is a judgmental God and heaven, it will come to pass that when the pearly gates open, those who had the valor to think for themselves will be escorted to the head of the line, garlanded, and given their own personal audience.
-
In my heart, I'm an Alabaman who went up north to work.
-
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.
-
So important are insects and other land-dwelling arthropods that if all were to disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a few months.
-
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.
-
In a purely technical sense, each species of higher organism-beetle, moss, and so forth, is richer in information than a Caravaggio painting, Mozart symphony, or any other great work of art.
-
The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper.
-
The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
This planet can be a paradise in the 22nd century.
-
Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.
-
The most peaceable tribes of today were often ravagers of yesteryear and will probably again produce soldiers and murderers in the future.
-
Ants make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects. There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost nothing about them.
-
Stable climates with muted seasons allow more kinds of organisms to specialize on narrower pieces of the environment, to outcompete the generalists around them, and so persist for longer periods of time. Species are packed more tightly. No niche, it seems goes unfilled. Specialization is likely to be pushed to bizarre, beautiful extremes.
-
The increase in brain size and refinement of stone artifacts point to an unbroken advance in mental ability over the last two or three million years. ...No organ in the history of life has grown faster.