The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.
E. O. WILSONIf we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it’s a map with constant immediate sensory input.
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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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Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.
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We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.
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Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind.
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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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Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.
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We have decommissioned natural selection and must now look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.
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Persist! The world needs all you can give.
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Without a trace of irony I can say I have been blessed with brilliant enemies. I owe them a great debt, because they redoubled my energies and drove me in new directions.
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The education of women is the best way to save the environment.
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There doesn’t seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.
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This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
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In some ways, I had a traditional ‘old South’ upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an
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People respect nonfiction but they read novels.
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Well, let me tell you, ants are the dominant insects. They make up as much as a quarter of the biomass of all insects in the world. They are the principal predators. They’re the cemetery workers.
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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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When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
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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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True character arises from a deeper well than religion.
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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.
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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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The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.
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Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure.
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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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In 2010, my two Harvard mathematician colleagues and I dismantled kin-selection theory, which was the reigning theory of the origin of altruism at the time.
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