The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.
E. O. WILSONThe moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.
E. O. WILSONIn many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.
E. O. WILSONIt’s always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That’s just in human relationships.
E. O. WILSONEvery kid has a bug period… I never grew out of mine.
E. O. WILSONAnts are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them.
E. O. WILSONIf 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. WILSONAn 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. WILSONTheology 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. WILSONScience for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.
E. O. WILSONScience and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds… is not productive.
E. O. WILSONIdeas emerge when a part of the real or imagined world is studied for its own sake.
E. O. WILSONThere doesn’t seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.
E. O. WILSONWe have decommissioned natural selection and must now look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.
E. O. WILSONWe ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It’s about conflicts between creation stories.
E. O. WILSONIn 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.
E. O. WILSONWilling 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