E. O. Wilson Quotes - Page 10

That is the great mystery of human evolution: how to account for calculus and Mozart.

In the process of natural selection, then, any device that can insert a higher proportion of certain genes into subsequent generations will come to characterize the species.

Be prepared mentally for some amount of chaos and failure. Waste and frustration often attend the earliest stages.

The growth of a naturalist is like the growth of a musician or athlete: excellence for the talented, lifelong enjoyment for the rest, benefit for humanity.

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.

Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year.

'The Creation' presents an argument for saving biological diversity on Earth. Most of the book is for as broad an audience as possible.

Theology made no provision for evolution.

On the lawn next to the sidewalk a fire ant colony is swarming. The ants are pouring out of a mound nest, here no more than an irregular pile of dirt partly flattened by the last pass of a lawnmower. Winged queens and males are taking off on their nuptial flight, protected by angry-looking workers that run up and down the grass blades and out onto the blistering-hot concrete of the sidewalk. The species is unmistakably Solenopsis geminata, the native fire ant.

So, the ant way of life is very ancient and very successful. As far as human beings are concerned, we've been around for only one million years--too soon be sure.

Once I feel I'm right, I have enjoyed provoking.

Science is not marginal. Like art, it is a universal possession of humanity, and scientific knowledge has become a vital part of our species' repertory. It comprises what we know of the material world with reasonable certainty. . . . Thanks to science and technology, access to factual information of all kinds is rising exponentially.

People respect nonfiction but they read novels.

Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it's a map with constant immediate sensory input.

In some ways, I had a traditional 'old South' upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an inoculum of the military ethic that is still with me today: honor, duty, loyalty.

People yearn to be in one of the best--a combat marine regiment, an elite college, the executive committee of a company, a religious sect, a fraternity, a garden club--any collectivity that can be compared favorably with other, competing groups.

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.

Biophilia, if it exists, and I believe it exists, is the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms.

I grew up as a Southern Baptist with strict adherence to the Bible, which I read as a youngster.

It may be argued that to know one kind of beetle is to know them all. But a species is not like a molecule in a cloud of molecules-it is a unique population.

The human juggernaut is permanently eroding Earth's ancient biosphere.

I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.

The commitment must be much deeper - to let no species knowingly die; to take all reasonable action to protect every species and race in perpetuity.

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

Search until you find a passion and go all out to excel in its expression.