That is the great mystery of human evolution: how to account for calculus and Mozart. — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
To genetic evolution, the human lineage has added the parallel track of cultural evolution. — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
“A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree.” — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Evolution by natural selection is not an idle hypothesis. The genetic variation on which selection acts is well understood in principle all… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Biophilia, if it exists, and I believe it exists, is the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms. — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
What's been gratifying is to live long enough to see molecular biology and evolutionary biology growing toward each other and uniting in… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
To be anthropocentric is to remain unaware of the limits of human nature, the significance of biological processes underlying human behavior, and… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
The time has come to link ecology to economic and human development. When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree,… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Darwin's dice have rolled badly for Earth. The human species is, in a word, an environmental abnormality. Perhaps a law of evolution… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
In a purely technical sense, each species of higher organism-beetle, moss, and so forth, is richer in information than a Caravaggio painting,… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
When you get into the whole field of exploring, probably 90 percent of the kinds of organisms, plants, animals and especially microorganisms… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Each of these [bacterial] species are masterpieces of evolution. Each has persisted for thousands to millions of years. Each is exquisitely adapted… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Biology has finally opened up to achieve a unifying embrace of all its disciplines. We're seeing the renaissance of what could be… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Real biologists who actually do the research will tell you that they almost never find a phenomenon, no matter how odd or… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind.… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
The students of biodiversity, the ones we most need in science today, have an enormous task ahead of molecular biology and the… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Nature first, then theory. Or, better, Nature and theory closely intertwined while you throw all your intellectual capital at the subject. Love… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
We have to create a sustainable environment, worldwide, and we're not doing it. The best thing we can do with the rest… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Biology is a science of three dimensions. The first is the study of each species across all levels of biological organization, molecule… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
The price of these failures has been a loss of moral consensus, a greater sense of helplessness about the human condition. ...… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
The living environment is the biosphere, the thin layer around the world of living organisms. We're part of that. Our existence is… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
There are millions and millions of species, including organisms most people have never heard of. There is so much that waits to… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
A paradigm shift is the best a scientist can hope for. Whenever I smell an opportunity like that, I go after it.… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
The second half of the 20th century was a golden age of molecular biology, and it was one of the golden ages… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
In fact, nothing in science as a whole has been more firmly established by interwoven factual information, or more illuminating than the… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Without a trace of irony I can say I have been blessed with brilliant enemies. I owe them a great debt, because they redoubled… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share
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… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share
Competing is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share
The commitment must be much deeper - to let no species knowingly die; to take all reasonable action to protect every species and race… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share
Science is not marginal. Like art, it is a universal possession of humanity, and scientific knowledge has become a vital part of our species'… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share
The living environment is the biosphere, the thin layer around the world of living organisms. We're part of that. Our existence is dependent on… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share
The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion, whether it's Southern Baptist or Islam… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share
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 Copy Share
In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems. — E. O. Wilson Copy Share
If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share
The extinctions ongoing worldwide promise to be at least as great as the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the age of… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share
Most people are surprised when they hear my somber figures: we know of 2 million species of plants, animals and microorganisms, and we can… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share
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 Copy Share
![“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…” quote by E. O. Wilson](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/7bf/e-o-wilson-1348_adapted_each-of-these-bacterial-species-are-mast_1047978.jpg)
