E. O. Wilson

Scientist

1929-06-10

Quotes by E. O. Wilson

• If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.

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• Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

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• Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.

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• In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.

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• 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.

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• Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.

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• 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 mass.

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

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

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• 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 or any religion that believes in a supernatural supervalance over humanity.

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• Ants are the dominant insects of the world, and they've had a great impact on habitats almost all over the land surface of the world for more than 50-million years.

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• Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?

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• By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.

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• 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.

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

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• Without a trace of irony I can say I have been blessed with brilliant enemies. I owe them a great debt, because they redoubled my energies and drove me in new directions.

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• It's always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That's just in human relationships.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Ants make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects. There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost nothing about them.

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