E. O. Wilson famous quotes

Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Profound #Speech #Sometimes

Go as far as you can, [young scientists]. The world needs you badly.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Needs #World #Need You

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Science #Years #Environmental

When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Bird #Tree #Ants

Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Struggle #Religion #Atheism

Destroying a tropical rainforest for profit is like burning all the paintings of the Louvre to cook dinner.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Burning #Dinner #Painting

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Nature #Meals #Burning

We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Nature #Mean #Humanity

You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Hard Times #Giving #Goal

Each of these [bacterial] species are masterpieces of evolution. Each has persisted for thousands to millions of years. Each is exquisitely adapted to the environment in which it lives, interlocked with other species to form ecosystems upon which our own lives depend in ways we have not begun even to imagine.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Years #Ecosystems #Way

Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Science #Religion #Tests

There can be no purpose more enspiriting than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Inspirational #Diversity #Age

The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper
-- E. O. Wilson

#Thinking #Poet #Scientist

We are not afraid of predators, we're transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival. In a deeply tribal way, we love our monsters...
-- E. O. Wilson

#Survival #Monsters #Fascination

Companies that are willing to share, to withhold in order to further the growth of the company, 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.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Winning #Order #Growth

Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Spiritual #Nature #Keys

All three of the Abrahamic religions were born and nurtured in arid, disturbed environments.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Three #Environment #Born

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. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Loss #Years #Diversity

The worst thing that will probably happen-in fact is already well underway-is not energy depletion, economic collapse, conventional war, or the expansion of totalitarian governments. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired in a few generations. The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
-- E. O. Wilson

#War #Loss #Years

Only in the last moment in history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world.
-- E. O. Wilson

#People #World #Lasts

There is no better high than discovery.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Inspirational #Recovery #Discovery

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. 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

#Motivational #Running #Knowledge

I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people, including fundamentalists, are quite intelligent, many of them are highly educated, and they should be treated with complete respect.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Religious #Intelligent #People

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

#Religious #Views #Mind

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.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Long #Effort #Research

I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn't intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Land #Mind #Vanishing

In the early stages of creation of both art and science, everything in the mind is a story.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Art #Mind #Stories

In the attempt to make scientific discoveries, every problem is an opportunity — and the more difficult the problem, the greater will be the importance of its solution.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Opportunity #Discovery #Problem

The education of women is the best way to save the environment.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Way #Environment #Save The Environment

It's the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Writing #Thinking #Technique

If enough species are extinguished, will the ecosystems collapse, and will the extinction of most other species follow soon afterward? The only answer anyone can give is: possibly. By the time we find out, however, it might be too late. One planet, one experiment.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Nature #Ecosystems #Giving

In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Land #Ecosystems #Would Be

I'm very much a Christian in ideals and ethics, especially in terms of belief in fairness, a deep set obligation to others, and the virtues of charity, tolerance and generosity that we associate with traditional Christian teaching.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Christian #Teaching #Generosity

We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It's about conflicts between creation stories.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Religious #Differences #People

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.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Selfish #Winning #Groups

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.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Real #Views #Effort

People would rather believe than know.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Believe #People #Environmental

When you get into the whole field of exploring, probably 90 percent of the kinds of organisms, plants, animals and especially microorganisms and tiny invertebrate animals are unknown. Then you realize that we live on a relatively unexplored plan.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Animal #Fields #Tiny

But I feel music has a very important role in ritual activity, and that being able to join in musical activity, along with dancing, could have been necessary at a very early stage of human culture.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Dancing #Musical #Important

We don't need to clear the 4 to 6 percent of the Earth's surface remaining in tropical rain forests, with most of the animal and plant species living there.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Rain #Animal #Tree

Humanity, in the desperate attempt to fit 8 billion or more people on the planet and give them a higher standard of living, is at risk of pushing the rest of life off the globe.
-- E. O. Wilson

#People #Giving #Humanity

Because the living environment is what really sustains us.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Environment

Now when you cut a forest, an ancient forest in particular, you are not just removing a lot of big trees and a few birds fluttering around in the canopy. You are drastically imperiling a vast array of species within a few square miles of you. The number of these species may go to tens of thousands. ... Many of them are still unknown to science, and science has not yet discovered the key role undoubtedly played in the maintenance of that ecosystem, as in the case of fungi, microorganisms, and many of the insects.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Cutting #Ecosystems #Numbers

Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Knowing #Humanity #Spirituality

You teach me, I forget. You show me, I remember. You involve me, I understand.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Remember #Forget You #Teach

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

#Believe #People #Survival

Ants are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Land #Ants #Life Is

To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Philosophical #Doors #Inquiry

One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Growing Up #Bugs #Periods

An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity.
-- E. O. Wilson

#War #Humanity #Sacred

I was a senior in high school when I decided I wanted to work on ants as a career. I just fell in love with them, and have never regretted it.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Senior #School #Careers

True character arises from a deeper well than religion.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Character #Arise #Wells

I've found that good dialogue tells you not only what people are saying or how they're communicating but it tells you a great deal - by dialect and tone, content and circumstance - about the quality of the character.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Character #People #Quality

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.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Two #Challenges #Majority

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

#Choices #Growth #Environmental

Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Intuition #Important #Form

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.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Land #Humanity #Wipe

It's always been a dream of mine, of exploring the living world, of classifying all the species and finding out what makes up the biosphere.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Dream #World #Biosphere

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

#Keys #People #Humanity

Human nature is deeper and broader than the artificial contrivance of any existing culture.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Culture #Human Nature #Deeper

One planet, one experiment.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Future #Vision #Environmental

The historical circumstance of interest is that the tropical rain forests have persisted over broad parts of the continents since their origins as stronghold of the flowering plants 150 million years ago.
-- E. O. Wilson

#Rain #Years #Historical

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

#World #Predator #Ants