E. O. Wilson Quotes - Page 2

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• Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong.

  E. O. Wilson

  Profound, Speech, Sometimes

  83 Copy quote

• The great paradox of determinism and free will, which has held the attention of the wisest of philosophers and psychologists for generations, can be phrased in more biological terms as follows: If our genes are inherited, and our environment is a train of physical events set in motion before we were born, how can there be a truly independent agent within the brain? The agent itself is created by the interaction of the genes and the environment. It would appear that our freedom is only a self delusion.

  E. O. Wilson

  Independent, Self, Brain

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Needs, Purpose

  "E.O. Wilson Is on Top of the World". Interview with Jill Neimark, www.psychologytoday.com. September 1, 1998.

  7 Copy quote

• We have to create a sustainable environment, worldwide, and we're not doing it. The best thing we can do with the rest of this century is aggressively acquire - and put aside - the richest natural reserves that we can, and then do our best to manage the needs and desires of the 11 billion people we expect to have by the end of the century. This is where biology is headed. For that reason, the sooner we get on with mapping biodiversity on Earth, the better off biology will be - not to mention the whole subject of saving it before we carelessly throw it away.

  E. O. Wilson

  People, Desire, Earth

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

  4 Copy quote

• Biological diversity is the key to the maintenance of the world as we know it... Eliminate one species, and another increases to take its place. Eliminate a great many species, and the local ecosystem starts to decay.

  E. O. Wilson

  Nature, Animal, Ecosystems

  87 Copy quote

• The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper

  E. O. Wilson

  Thinking, Poet, Scientist

  E. O. Wilson (2014). “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge”, p.90, Vintage

  41 Copy quote

• 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

  70 Copy quote

• Humanity is part of nature, a species that evolved among other species. The more closely we identify ourselves with the rest of life, the more quickly we will be able to discover the sources of human sensibility and acquire the knowledge on which an enduring ethic, a sense of preferred direction, can be built.

  E. O. Wilson

  Rest Of Life, Humanity, Able

  48 Copy quote

• 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

  "The Diversity of Life". Book by Edward O. Wilson, 1992.

  98 Copy quote

• 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

  Rest Of Life, People, Giving

  52 Copy quote

• The search for knowledge is in our genes. It was put there by our distant ancestors who spread across the world, and it's never going to be quenched.

  E. O. Wilson

  World, Genes, Ancestor

  38 Copy quote

• 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

  Science, Cutting, Numbers

  "Naturally Good: A Behavioral History of Moral Development from Charles Darwin to E.O. Wilson". Book by John Henry Morgan, 2005.

  58 Copy quote

• 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, Rest Of Life, Ants

  "An Interview With E.O. Wilson, the Father of the Encyclopedia of Life". Interview with David Pogue, www.nytimes.com. October 23, 2008.

  23 Copy quote

• 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

  26 Copy quote

• One planet, one experiment.

  E. O. Wilson

  Future, Vision, Environmental

  16 Copy quote

• One difference between ants and humans is that while ants send their old women off to war, humans send their young men.

  E. O. Wilson

  War, Men, Differences

  11 Copy quote

• Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.

  E. O. Wilson

  Heart, Winning, Mind

  "E.O. Wilson Is on Top of the World". Interview with Jill Neimark, www.psychologytoday.com. September 1, 1998.

  25 Copy quote

• True character arises from a deeper well than religion.

  E. O. Wilson

  Character, Atheism, Arise

  E. O. Wilson (2014). “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge”, p.365, Vintage

  26 Copy quote

• 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

  Spiritual, Knowing, Humanity

  "The sound science of Björk's 'Biophilia'" by Rob Mitchum, www.mtv.com. October 25, 2011.

  13 Copy quote

• I would say that for the sake of human progress, the best thing we could possibly do would be to diminish, to the point of eliminating, religious faiths. But certainly not eliminating the natural yearnings of our species or the asking of these great questions.

  E. O. Wilson

  Religious, Progress, Would Be

  6 Copy quote

• Biodiversity is the totality of all inherited variation in the life forms of Earth, of which we are one species. We study and save it to our great benefit. We ignore and degrade it to our great peril.

  E. O. Wilson

  Variation, Benefits, Earth

  14 Copy quote

• Without the instruments and accumulated knowledge of the natural sciences... humans are trapped in a cognitive prison. They are like intelligent fish born in a deep shallowed pool. Wondering and restless, longing to reach out, they think about the world outside. They invent ingenious speculations and myths about the origin of the confining waters, of the sun and the sky and the stars above , and the meaning of their own existence. But they are wrong, always wrong because the world is too remote from ordinary experience to be merely imagined.

  E. O. Wilson

  Stars, Intelligent, Thinking

  12 Copy quote

• Darwin's dice have rolled badly for Earth. The human species is, in a word, an environmental abnormality. Perhaps a law of evolution is that intelligence usually extinguishes itself.

  E. O. Wilson

  Law, Environmental, Abnormal

  7 Copy quote

• When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.

  E. O. Wilson

  Bird, Tree, Ants

  46 Copy quote

• Go as far as you can, [young scientists]. The world needs you badly.

  E. O. Wilson

  Needs, World, Need You

  72 Copy quote

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