E. O. Wilson Quotes
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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.
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America in particular imposes an horrendous burden on the world. We have this wonderful standard of living but it comes at enormous cost.
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What's been gratifying is to live long enough to see molecular biology and evolutionary biology growing toward each other and uniting in research efforts.
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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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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.
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All three of the Abrahamic religions were born and nurtured in arid, disturbed environments.
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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.
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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.
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No barrier stands between the material world of science and the sensibilities of the hunter and the poet.
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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.
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Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and very fast, whereas biological evolution is Darwinian and usually very slow.
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This planet can be a paradise in the 22nd century.
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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.
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One difference between ants and humans is that while ants send their old women off to war, humans send their young men.
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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.
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I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn't intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife.
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Nationalism and racism, to take two examples, are the culturally nurtured outgrowths of simple tribalism.
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We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It's about conflicts between creation stories.
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In early history phobias might have provided the extra margin needed to insure survival...
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In my heart, I'm an Alabaman who went up north to work.
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I'm very much a Christian in ideals and ethics, especially in terms of belief in fairness, a deep set obligation to others, and the virtues of charity, tolerance and generosity that we associate with traditional Christian teaching.
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Biology has finally opened up to achieve a unifying embrace of all its disciplines. We're seeing the renaissance of what could be called scientific natural history, which makes available the groundwork - the foundation work - of what is actually on the Earth.
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We can search among the unconscious, emotion-laden learning rules for the kind of behavior most directly influenced by genetic evolution.
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The borderline between normal and schizophrenic people is broad and nearly imperceptible.