The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.
E. O. WILSONTrue character arises from a deeper well than religion.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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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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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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The world depends on fungi, because they are major players in the cycling of materials and energy around the world.
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One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.
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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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Persist! The world needs all you can give.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
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In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.
E. O. WILSON