E. O. Wilson Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
No barrier stands between the material world of science and the sensibilities of the hunter and the poet.
-
America in particular imposes an horrendous burden on the world. We have this wonderful standard of living but it comes at enormous cost.
-
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.
-
Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The fraction of Americans working in occupations concerned primarily with information has increased from 20 to nearly 50 percent of the work force.
-
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.
-
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 love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.
-
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 most peaceable tribes of today were often ravagers of yesteryear and will probably again produce soldiers and murderers in the future.
-
The mosquito is an automaton. It can afford to be nothing else.
-
It's always been a dream of mine, of exploring the living world, of classifying all the species and finding out what makes up the biosphere.
-
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 extinctions ongoing worldwide promise to be at least as great as the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the age of dinosaurs.
-
All three of the Abrahamic religions were born and nurtured in arid, disturbed environments.
-
This planet can be a paradise in the 22nd century.