E. O. Wilson Quotes
-
Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.
-
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.
-
We are not compelled to believe in biological uniformity in order to affirm human freedom and dignity.
-
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.
-
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.
-
All three of the Abrahamic religions were born and nurtured in arid, disturbed environments.
-
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.
-
This planet can be a paradise in the 22nd century.
-
America in particular imposes an horrendous burden on the world. We have this wonderful standard of living but it comes at enormous cost.
-
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.
-
Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and very fast, whereas biological evolution is Darwinian and usually very slow.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It's about conflicts between creation stories.
-
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.
-
We can search among the unconscious, emotion-laden learning rules for the kind of behavior most directly influenced by genetic evolution.
-
In early history phobias might have provided the extra margin needed to insure survival...
-
The borderline between normal and schizophrenic people is broad and nearly imperceptible.
-
Nationalism and racism, to take two examples, are the culturally nurtured outgrowths of simple tribalism.
-
If religion and science could be united on the common ground of biological conservation, the problem would be soon solved. If there is any moral precept shared by people of all beliefs, it is that we owe ourselves and future generations a beautiful, rich, and healthful environment.
-
The three extreme kinds of schizophrenia are unmistakable: the haunted paranoid surrounded by his imaginary community of spies and assassins, the clownish, sometimes incontinent hebephrenic, and the frozen catatonic.
-
In my heart, I'm an Alabaman who went up north to work.
-
The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper.