The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.
E. O. WILSONIt’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.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
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Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds… is not productive.
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This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
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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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Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.
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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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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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Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
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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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There is no better high than discovery.
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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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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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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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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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By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
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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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