The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats.
E. O. WILSONI 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.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
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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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Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.
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Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.
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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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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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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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We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.
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Because the living environment is what really sustains us.
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I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution.
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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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This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
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Ideas emerge when a part of the real or imagined world is studied for its own sake.
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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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When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
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The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.
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Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure.
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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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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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Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds… is not productive.
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If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way.
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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.
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Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.
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Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.
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Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.
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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