In some ways, I had a traditional ‘old South’ upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an
E. O. WILSONBlind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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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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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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I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution.
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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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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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Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.
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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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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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The education of women is the best way to save the environment.
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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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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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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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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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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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Every kid has a bug period… I never grew out of mine.
E. O. WILSON