A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.
E. O. WILSONReligious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.
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Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.
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Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.
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There is no better high than discovery.
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Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.
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If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
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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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Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?
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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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Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure.
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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.
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By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
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In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.
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If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.
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It’s always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That’s just in human relationships.
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People respect nonfiction but they read novels.
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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?
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The education of women is the best way to save the environment.
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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.
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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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It’s obvious that the key problem facing humanity in the coming century is how to bring a better quality of life – for 8 billion or more people – without wrecking the environment entirely in the attempt.
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Ants are the dominant insects of the world, and they’ve had a great impact on habitats almost all over the land surface of the world for more than 50-million years.
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The world depends on fungi, because they are major players in the cycling of materials and energy around the world.
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Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.
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If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way.
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Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds… is not productive.
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