If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.
E. O. WILSONWhen you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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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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Every kid has a bug period… I never grew out of mine.
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We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.
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Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.
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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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The world depends on fungi, because they are major players in the cycling of materials and energy around the world.
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Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.
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The education of women is the best way to save the environment.
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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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Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure.
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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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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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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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In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.
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If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago.
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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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By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
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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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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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The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.
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Because the living environment is what really sustains us.
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One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.
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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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If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
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Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
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