Edward O. Wilson Quotes

Would the humanities care to colonize the sciences?

[S]elfish members win within groups, but groups of altruists best groups of selfish members. (63)

The origin of modern humanity was a stroke of luck - good for our species for a while, bad for most of the rest of life forever. All

A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree.

In the end ... success or failure will come down to an ethical decision, one on which those now living will be judged for generations to come.

Real scientists do not take vacations. They take field trips ...

The best way to live in this real world is to free ourselves of demons and tribal gods.

A society that condemns homosexuality harms itself. (254)

The human impact on biodiversity, to put the matter as briefly as possible, is an attack on ourselves.

Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species

One planet, one experiment.

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

phenotypic plasticity,

the biological mind is the essence and the very meaning of the human condition.

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

I will argue that every scrap of biological diversity is priceless, to be learned and cherished, and never to be surrendered without a struggle.

People would rather believe than know.

We are not compelled to believe in biological uniformity in order to affirm freedom and dignity

Animals of the land environment are dominated by species with the most complex social systems.

We are chemosensory idiots. By comparison most other organisms are geniuses.

The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.

Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.

You teach me, I forget. You show me, I remember. You involve me, I understand.

The true cause of hatred and violence is faith versus faith, an outward expression of the ancient instinct of tribalism.

Human beings were made for music. Its thrill and rapture are picked up almost immediately by little children

There is no better high than discovery.

Human nature is deeper and broader than the artificial contrivance of any existing culture.

Socialism really works under some circumstances. Karl Marx just had the wrong species.

Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.

HISTORY IS A bath of blood," wrote William James,

So what could the hypothetical aliens learn from us that has any value to them? The correct answer is the humanities.

Very often ambition and entrepreneurial drive, in combination, beat brilliance.

To get hold of the human condition, we need next a much broader definition of history than is conventionally used.

Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.

A spider spinning its web intends, whether conscious of the outcome or not, to catch a fly. That is the meaning of the web.

What is man? Storyteller, mythmaker, and destroyer of the living world. Thinking

except for behaving like apes much of the time and suffering genetically limited life spans, we are godlike.

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.

All of the species that have attained eusociality, as I have stressed, live in fortified nest sites.

Soccer moms are the enemy of natural history and the full development of a child.

The human condition is a singularity,

The creation myth is a Darwinian device for survival.

[E]very major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.

They travel long distances to stroll along the seashore, for reasons they can't put into words.

[Scientific humanism is] the only worldview compatible with science's growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature.

Are human beings intrinsically good but corruptible by the forces of evil, or the reverse, innately sinful yet redeemable by the forces of good?

Preferring a search for objective reality over revelation is another way of satisfying religious hunger.

The greater problems of history are not solved; they are merely forgotten.