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. 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.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
-
-
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 -
The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.
E. O. WILSON -
Persist! The world needs all you can give.
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 -
We have decommissioned natural selection and must now look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.
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 -
There doesn’t seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.
E. O. WILSON -
When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
E. O. WILSON -
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.
E. O. WILSON -
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. 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 -
If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way.
E. O. WILSON -
In some ways, I had a traditional ‘old South’ upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an
E. O. WILSON -
True character arises from a deeper well than religion.
E. O. WILSON -
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. WILSON