Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
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
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It’s always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That’s just in human relationships.
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We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It’s about conflicts between creation stories.
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Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind.
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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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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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People respect nonfiction but they read novels.
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If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
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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 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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Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.
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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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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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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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Well, let me tell you, ants are the dominant insects. They make up as much as a quarter of the biomass of all insects in the world. They are the principal predators. They’re the cemetery workers.
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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.
E. O. WILSON