If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.
E. O. WILSONIdeas emerge when a part of the real or imagined world is studied for its own sake.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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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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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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One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.
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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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You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path.
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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 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.
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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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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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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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Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.
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Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.
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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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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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By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
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