Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
E. O. WILSONPeople respect nonfiction but they read novels.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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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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Competing is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups of selfish individuals.
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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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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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Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure.
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Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.
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If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way.
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The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.
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Jehovah had nothing to say to Moses and the others about the care of the planet. He had plenty to say about tribal loyalty and conquest.
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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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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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True character arises from a deeper well than religion.
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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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Ideas emerge when a part of the real or imagined world is studied for its own sake.
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I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.
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There is no better high than discovery.
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Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.
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Willing to try to get a better atmosphere through a demonstration of democratic principles, fairness and cooperation, a better product, those will win in the end.
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By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
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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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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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There doesn’t seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.
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Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?
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If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago.
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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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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.
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