“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.”

In some ways, I had a traditional ‘old South’ upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an

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.

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.

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.

The education of women is the best way to save the environment.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.

Every kid has a bug period… I never grew out of mine.

If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.

It’s always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That’s just in human relationships.

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.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

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?

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

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.

Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds… is not productive.

Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.

The more flexible an economy, the greater its ability to self-correct in response to inevitable, often unanticipated, disturbances and thus to contain the size and consequences of cyclical imbalances.

In a correction, other people’s stocks go down, in a bear market, your stocks go down.

He who corrects an arrogant man earns insult; and he who reproves a wicked man incurs opprobrium.

When I give a lecture on Egypt there are thousands of people in the lecture hall, so obviously they would like to go to science and they would love to do science, but you really have to get the correct science base in order for them to interact.

I think ought to have more and correct some of the matters fate fails to take care of.

The improvement of the mind improves the heart and corrects the understanding.

When my dreams showed signs of becoming politically correct no unruly images escaping beyond borders … then I began to wonder

The readiest and surest way to get rid of censure, is to correct ourselves.