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. WILSONIf those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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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?
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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 have decommissioned natural selection and must now look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.
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Ants are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them.
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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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Persist! The world needs all you can give.
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Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it’s a map with constant immediate sensory input.
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Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the ‘environmentalist’ view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.
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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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In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.
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Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.
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Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.
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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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By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
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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.
E. O. WILSON






