Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.
E. O. WILSONThis is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice.
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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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The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats.
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I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution.
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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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Ants make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects. There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost nothing about them.
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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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There doesn’t seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.
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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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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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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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Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
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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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The two major challenges for the 21st century are to improve the economic situation of the majority and save as much of the planet as we can.
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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