Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.
E. O. WILSONWhen you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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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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Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.
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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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Because the living environment is what really sustains us.
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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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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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Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.
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Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure.
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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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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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The education of women is the best way to save the environment.
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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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We have decommissioned natural selection and must now look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.
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If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.
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Without a trace of irony I can say I have been blessed with brilliant enemies. I owe them a great debt, because they redoubled my energies and drove me in new directions.
E. O. WILSON






