Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.
E. O. WILSONIf history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution.
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True character arises from a deeper well than religion.
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I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.
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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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Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.
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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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Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
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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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Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure.
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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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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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Because the living environment is what really sustains us.
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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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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.
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The two major challenges for the 21st century are to improve the economic situation of the majority and save as much of the planet as we can.
E. O. WILSON