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If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving little or nothing for livestock, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable land (3.5 billion acres) would support about 10 billion people.
E. O. Wilson -
The cutting of primeval forest and other disasters, fueled by the demands of growing human populations, are the overriding threat to biological diversity everywhere.
E. O. Wilson
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[Bacteria are the] dark matter of the biological world [with 4 million mostly unknown species in a ton of soil].
E. O. Wilson -
[T]he true natural sciences lock together in theory and evidence to form the ineradicable technical base of modern civilization. The pseudosciences satisfy personal psychological needs... but lack the ideas or the means to contribute to the technical base.
E. O. Wilson -
In the attempt to make scientific discoveries, every problem is an opportunity — and the more difficult the problem, the greater will be the importance of its solution.
E. O. Wilson -
In science, you really do need to have a purpose-driven life. You will succeed to the extent that you get the most out of your career so that you can give the most back. Try to be an addict, driven to achieve discoveries, learning new things, and then writing about them.
E. O. Wilson -
An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity.
E. O. Wilson -
The second half of the 20th century was a golden age of molecular biology, and it was one of the golden ages of the history of science. Molecular biology was so successful and made such a powerful alliance with the medical scientists that the two together just flourished. And they continue to flourish.
E. O. Wilson
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Jungles and grasslands are the logical destinations, and towns and farmland the labyrinths that people have imposed between them sometime in the past. I cherish the green enclaves accidentally left behind.
E. O. Wilson -
[The natural world cleans water, pollinates plants and provides pharmaceuticals, among many other gifts.] Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year.
E. O. Wilson -
Each of these [bacterial] species are masterpieces of evolution. Each has persisted for thousands to millions of years. Each is exquisitely adapted to the environment in which it lives, interlocked with other species to form ecosystems upon which our own lives depend in ways we have not begun even to imagine.
E. O. Wilson -
In fact, nothing in science as a whole has been more firmly established by interwoven factual information, or more illuminating than the universal occurrence of biological evolution. Further, few natural processes have been more convincingly explained than evolution by the theory of natural selection, or as it has been popularly called, Darwinism.
E. O. Wilson -
In the end ... success or failure will come down to an ethical decision, one on which those now living will be judged for generations to come.
E. O. Wilson -
The growth of a naturalist is like the growth of a musician or athlete: excellence for the talented, lifelong enjoyment for the rest, benefit for humanity.
E. O. Wilson
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The cardinal mystery of neurobiology is not self-love or dreams of immortality but intentionality. What is the prime mover, the weaver who guides the flashing shuttles?
E. O. Wilson -
So, the ant way of life is very ancient and very successful. As far as human beings are concerned, we've been around for only one million years--too soon be sure.
E. O. Wilson -
These slender little people (Homo Habilis), the size of modern 12 year olds, were devoid of fangs and claws and almost certainly slower on foot than the four legged animals around them. They could have succeeded in their new way of life only by relying on tools and sophisticated cooperative behavior
E. O. Wilson -
There are millions and millions of species, including organisms most people have never heard of. There is so much that waits to be told. We don't know the functions of most of them, but they may be more vital for the planet's future sustainability than we can even dream. And we have to find out; we need to be doing this sort of study.
E. O. Wilson -
People must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves. We are obligated by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.
E. O. Wilson -
The solutions like freezing zygotes, fertilized eggs, of all kinds of animals and so on, or keeping them in zoos and having arboreta where we have trees, all these things have been promoted. Even getting the complete genetic code of various fishes so we can let them pass away and then we'll pull them back. That is science fiction run amok.
E. O. Wilson
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Biodiversity is the totality of all inherited variation in the life forms of Earth, of which we are one species. We study and save it to our great benefit. We ignore and degrade it to our great peril.
E. O. Wilson -
Science needs the intuition and metaphorical power of the arts, and the arts need the fresh blood of science ... Interpretation is the logical channel of consilient explanation between science and the arts. The arts ... also nourish our craving for the mystical.
E. O. Wilson -
In the process of natural selection, then, any device that can insert a higher proportion of certain genes into subsequent generations will come to characterize the species.
E. O. Wilson -
Biophilia, if it exists, and I believe it exists, is the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms.
E. O. Wilson