Biological diversity is the key to the maintenance of the world as we know it... Eliminate one species, and another increases to… — E. O. Wilson Animal Copy Share Image
[The natural world cleans water, pollinates plants and provides pharmaceuticals, among many other gifts.] Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to… — E. O. Wilson Dollars Copy Share Image
So important are insects and other land-dwelling arthropods that if all were to disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
Secular humanists can sit around and talk about their love of humanity, but it doesn't stack up against a two-millennium-old funeral high… — E. O. Wilson Funeral Copy Share Image
Human beings function better if they are deceived by their genes into thinking that there is a disinterested objective morality binding upon… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
I believe that traditional religious belief and scientific knowledge depict the universe in radically different ways. At the bedrock they are incompatible… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
The vast majority of species that are vanishing, we haven't even discovered yet. How can you possibly put them back in nature… — E. O. Wilson Ecosystems Copy Share Image
No statistical proofs exist that prayer reduces illness and mortality, except perhaps through a psychogenic enhancement of the immune system; if it… — E. O. Wilson Death Copy Share Image
We should not knowingly allow any species or race to go extinct. And let us go beyond mere salvage to begin the… — E. O. Wilson Age 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
I would say that for the sake of human progress, the best thing we could possibly do would be to diminish, to… — E. O. Wilson Copy Share Image
In science, you really do need to have a purpose-driven life. You will succeed to the extent that you get the most… — 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 Atheism 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
Most people are surprised when they hear my somber figures: we know of 2 million species of plants, animals and microorganisms, and… — E. O. Wilson Anatomy Copy Share Image
The green prehuman earth is the mystery we were chosen to solve, a guide to the birthplace of our spirit, but it… — 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
![“[The natural world cleans water, pollinates plants and provides pharmaceuticals, among many other gifts.] Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year.” quote by E. O. Wilson](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/869/e-o-wilson-1348_dollars_the-natural-world-cleans-water-pollinate_253878.png)
