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.
E. O. WILSONThe 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.
More E. O. Wilson Quotes
-
-
An individual ant, even though it has a brain about a millionth of a size of a human being’s, can learn a maze; the kind we use is a simple rat maze in a laboratory. They can learn it about one-half as fast as a rat.
E. O. WILSON -
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.
E. O. WILSON -
By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.
E. O. WILSON -
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.
E. O. WILSON -
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.
E. O. WILSON -
The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.
E. O. WILSON -
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?
E. O. WILSON -
There doesn’t seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.
E. O. WILSON -
It’s always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That’s just in human relationships.
E. O. WILSON -
I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution.
E. O. WILSON -
If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way.
E. O. WILSON -
True character arises from a deeper well than religion.
E. O. WILSON -
When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
E. O. WILSON -
This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
E. O. WILSON -
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.
E. O. WILSON -
Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.
E. O. WILSON -
Because the living environment is what really sustains us.
E. O. WILSON -
Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.
E. O. WILSON -
In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.
E. O. WILSON -
People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.
E. O. WILSON -
Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.
E. O. WILSON -
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.
E. O. WILSON -
We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom.
E. O. WILSON -
If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago.
E. O. WILSON -
Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds… is not productive.
E. O. WILSON -
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.
E. O. WILSON