“Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.”

People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.

If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.

Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it’s a map with constant immediate sensory input.

If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way.

In some ways, I had a traditional ‘old South’ upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an

Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the ‘environmentalist’ view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.

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.

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.

The education of women is the best way to save the environment.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.

Every kid has a bug period… I never grew out of mine.

If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.

It’s always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That’s just in human relationships.

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.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

Money maketh man a tory, don’t fire that assumption at me, I like toast as much as anyone but not for breakfast, dinner and tea

When we believe in lies, we cannot see the truth, so we make thousands of assumptions and we take them as truth. One of the biggest assumptions we make is that the lies we believe are the truth!

We make the assumption that everyone sees life the way we do

Don’t make assumptions.

An assumption cannot be used to justify making second-class citizens of those who are unfortunate enough to constitute living proof of the inaccuracy of that assumption.

I like the rough impersonality of New York … Human relations are oiled by jokes, complaints, and confessions-all made with the assumption of never seeing the other person again.

Sometimes I’m just as prejudiced as people I point fingers at. And that’s not right. How can I look at white skin and make assumptions but not want assumptions made about me? That’s not right.

Our assumptions are the edges of our worlds.