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. WILSONAim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
-
-
We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.
E. O. WILSON -
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.
E. O. WILSON -
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.
E. O. WILSON -
Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.
E. O. WILSON -
We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.
E. O. WILSON -
Ants are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them.
E. O. WILSON -
Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice.
E. O. WILSON -
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.
E. O. WILSON -
Jehovah had nothing to say to Moses and the others about the care of the planet. He had plenty to say about tribal loyalty and conquest.
E. O. WILSON -
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.
E. O. WILSON -
Willing to try to get a better atmosphere through a demonstration of democratic principles, fairness and cooperation, a better product, those will win in the end.
E. O. WILSON -
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. WILSON -
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?
E. O. WILSON -
Every kid has a bug period… I never grew out of mine.
E. O. WILSON -
If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago.
E. O. WILSON -
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.
E. O. WILSON -
If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
E. O. WILSON -
Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.
E. O. WILSON -
By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
E. O. WILSON -
Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.
E. O. WILSON -
I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution.
E. O. WILSON -
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.
E. O. WILSON -
The world depends on fungi, because they are major players in the cycling of materials and energy around the world.
E. O. WILSON -
Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.
E. O. WILSON -
We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It’s about conflicts between creation stories.
E. O. WILSON -
Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
E. O. WILSON