The historical circumstance of interest is that the tropical rain forests have persisted over broad parts of the continents since their origins… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
We don't need to clear the 4 to 6 percent of the Earth's surface remaining in tropical rain forests, with most of… — E. O. Wilson Animal Copy Share Image
Biophilia: the innate pleasure from living abundance and diversity as manifested by the human impulse to imitate Nature with gardens. — E. O. Wilson Abundance Copy Share Image
The extinctions ongoing worldwide promise to be at least as great as the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the… — E. O. Wilson Age Copy Share Image
Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they… — E. O. Wilson Biblical Copy Share Image
The growth of a naturalist is like the growth of a musician or athlete: excellence for the talented, lifelong enjoyment for the… — E. O. Wilson Athlete Copy Share Image
What we need is an electronic encyclopedia of life, with one page for each species. On each page is given everything known… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
In the attempt to make scientific discoveries, every problem is an opportunity — and the more difficult the problem, the greater will… — 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 Bacteria 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 Biology Copy Share Image
Somewhere close I knew spear-nosed bats flew through the tree crowns in search of fruit, palm vipers coiled in ambush in the… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
On the lawn next to the sidewalk a fire ant colony is swarming. The ants are pouring out of a mound nest,… — E. O. Wilson Angry Copy Share Image
The newborn infant is now seen to be wired with awesome precision... This marvelous robot will be launched into the world under… — E. O. Wilson Birth Copy Share Image
That's what the best global conservation organisations and the American government (and other environmentally inclined governments, such as Sweden and the Netherlands)… — E. O. Wilson American government Copy Share Image
We don't even know what species are out there, for the most part, particularly when you get down to the microbes and… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Hands-on experience at the critical time, not systematic knowledge, is what counts in the making of a naturalist. Better to be an… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human… — E. O. Wilson Assumption Copy Share Image
But I feel music has a very important role in ritual activity, and that being able to join in musical activity, along… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength. — E. O. Wilson Belief Copy Share Image
And pigs may fly. And we may be able to terraform and send surface populations to Mars. And Jesus may come next… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
No species ... possesses a purpose beyond the imperatives created by genetic history ... The human mind is a device for survival… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Ants make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects. There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost… — E. O. Wilson Ants 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 Behavior Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings. About the ambitious pursuit of… — E. O. Wilson Ambition Copy Share Image
The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion, whether it's Southern Baptist… — E. O. Wilson Baptists Copy Share Image
The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous,… — E. O. Wilson Crisis Copy Share Image
Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience… — E. O. Wilson Admiration Copy Share Image
The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people, including fundamentalists, are quite intelligent, many of them are highly educated, and… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
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 Atheism Copy Share Image
The cutting of primeval forest and other disasters, fueled by the demands of growing human populations, are the overriding threat to biological… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
There can be no purpose more enspiriting than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still… — E. O. Wilson Age Copy Share Image
Biodiversity is the totality of all inherited variation in the life forms of Earth, of which we are one species. We study… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Progress, then, is a property of the evolution of life as a whole by almost any conceivable intuitive standard… let us not… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
We are not afraid of predators, we're transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because… — 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 Ants 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 Art Copy Share Image
Sstudying ants just quickly became part of me because I was allowed to wander, explore and find things and figure things out… — E. O. Wilson Ants Copy Share Image
