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?
E. O. WILSONPersist! The world needs all you can give.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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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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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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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.
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True character arises from a deeper well than religion.
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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.
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Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.
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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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Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.
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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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We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.
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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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Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds… is not productive.
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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.
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Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.
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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.
E. O. WILSON