E. O. Wilson Quotes & Sayings

People must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves. We are obligated by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here. — E. O. Wilson

Today [the voice of women] is being heard loud and clear. But I do not read the welcome triumph of feminism, social, economic, and creative, as a brief for postmodernism. The advance, while opening new avenues of expression and liberating deep pools of talent, has not exploded human nature into little pieces. Instead, it has set the stage for a fuller exploration of the universal traits that unite humanity. — E. O. Wilson

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

But I feel music has a very important role in ritual activity, and that being able to join in musical activity, along with dancing, could have been necessary at a very early stage of human culture. — E. O. Wilson

We don't even know what species are out there, for the most part, particularly when you get down to the microbes and very small invertebrates. They make up the mass of the organisms around us, including the soil we depend on, the soil of cornfields as well as hardwood forests. We haven't taken ecology to the point where we can even make a crude prediction of what's going to happen when we've reduced the living world down to a certain level. — E. O. Wilson

Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind. — E. O. Wilson

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. — E. O. Wilson

In a purely technical sense, each species of higher organism-beetle, moss, and so forth, is richer in information than a Caravaggio painting, Mozart symphony, or any other great work of art. — E. O. Wilson

If someone could actually prove scientifically that there is such a thing as a supernatural force, it would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science. So the notion that somehow scientists are resisting it is ludicrous. — E. O. Wilson

To search for unasked questions, plus questions to put to already acquired but unsought answers, it is vital to give full play to the imagination. That is the way to create truly original science. — E. O. Wilson

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. — E. O. Wilson

The paradox is that, by children taking shortcuts through computer games, through fantasies, through movies that load on all the emotional stimulation of encountering life in a stylized way - all of this is the equivalent of mainlining of paleolithic emotions, emotions about combat, about personal success, about overcoming monsters, about making powerful friendships, about winning wars and entering new territory. — E. O. Wilson

America in particular imposes an horrendous burden on the world. We have this wonderful standard of living but it comes at enormous cost. — E. O. Wilson

Human beings function better if they are deceived by their genes into thinking that there is a disinterested objective morality binding upon them, which all should obey. — E. O. Wilson

Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we're hard-wired to form tribalistic religions. — E. O. Wilson

The extinctions ongoing worldwide promise to be at least as great as the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the age of dinosaurs. — E. O. Wilson

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. — E. O. Wilson

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. — E. O. Wilson

The world depends on fungi, because they are major players in the cycling of materials and energy around the world. — E. O. Wilson

In science, obsessiveness under psychological control can be a virtue. — E. O. Wilson

The price of these failures has been a loss of moral consensus, a greater sense of helplessness about the human condition ... The intellectual solution to the first dilemma can be achieved by a deeper and more courageous examination of human nature that combines the findings of biology with those of the social sciences. — E. O. Wilson

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. — E. O. Wilson

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

[T]he true natural sciences lock together in theory and evidence to form the ineradicable technical base of modern civilization. The pseudosciences satisfy personal psychological needs ... but lack the ideas or the means to contribute to the technical base. — E. O. Wilson

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

Science needs the intuition and metaphorical power of the arts, and the arts need the fresh blood of science ... Interpretation is the logical channel of consilient explanation between science and the arts. The arts ... also nourish our craving for the mystical. — E. O. Wilson

I believe that traditional religious belief and scientific knowledge depict the universe in radically different ways. At the bedrock they are incompatible and mutually exclusive. — E. O. Wilson

To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong. — E. O. Wilson

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

The living environment is the biosphere, the thin layer around the world of living organisms. We're part of that. Our existence is dependent on it in ways that people haven't even begun to appreciate. Our existence depends not just on its existence, but its stability and its richness. — E. O. Wilson

So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world. — E. O. Wilson

Exclusion makes us suffer, inclusion makes us thrive. — E. O. Wilson

Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety. — E. O. Wilson

It's like having astronomy without knowing where the stars are. — E. O. Wilson

Ants are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them. — E. O. Wilson

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

Each species is a masterpiece, a creation assembled with extreme care and genius. — E. O. Wilson

No species ... possesses a purpose beyond the imperatives created by genetic history ... The human mind is a device for survival and reproduction, and reason is just one of its various techniques. — E. O. Wilson

I think we will make it. Because one quality people have - certainly Americans have it - is that they can adapt when they see necessity staring them in the face. What to avoid is what someone once called the definition of hell: truth realized too late. — E. O. Wilson

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

The cutting of primeval forest and other disasters, fueled by the demands of growing human populations, are the overriding threat to biological diversity everywhere. — E. O. Wilson

An individual ant, even though it has a brain about a millionth of a size of a human being's, can learn a maze; the kind we use is a simple rat maze in a laboratory. They can learn it about one-half as fast as a rat. — E. O. Wilson

The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. — E. O. Wilson

Ideas emerge when a part of the real or imagined world is studied for its own sake. — E. O. Wilson

Every native species, however humble in appearance ... has its place in the nation's heritage. It is a masterpiece of evolution, an ancient, multifaceted entity that shares the land with us. — E. O. Wilson

In the attempt to make scientific discoveries, every problem is an opportunity - and the more difficult the problem, the greater will be the importance of its solution. — E. O. Wilson

If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. — E. O. Wilson

In science, you really do need to have a purpose-driven life. You will succeed to the extent that you get the most out of your career so that you can give the most back. Try to be an addict, driven to achieve discoveries, learning new things, and then writing about them. — E. O. Wilson

People respect nonfiction but they read novels. — E. O. Wilson

Most people believe they know how they themselves think, how others think too, and even how institutions evolve. But they are wrong. Their understanding is based on folk psychology, the grasp of human nature by common sense ¾ defined (by Einstein) as everything learned to the age of 18 ¾ shot through with misconceptions, and only slightly advanced over ideas employed by the Greek philosophers — E. O. Wilson

If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months. — E. O. Wilson

Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition. — E. O. Wilson

To know how scientists engage in visual imagery is to understand how they think creatively. — E. O. Wilson

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. — E. O. Wilson

Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year. — E. O. Wilson

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. — E. O. Wilson

These slender little people (Homo Habilis), the size of modern 12 year olds, were devoid of fangs and claws and almost certainly slower on foot than the four legged animals around them. They could have succeeded in their new way of life only by relying on tools and sophisticated cooperative behavior — E. O. Wilson

Science is the global civilization of which I am a citizen. The spread of its democratic ethic and its unifying powers provides my faith in humanity. The astonishing depths of wonders in the universe, continuously revealed by science is my temple. The capacity of the informed human mind, liberated at last by the understanding that we are alone and thus the sole stewards of earth, is my religion. The potential of humanity to turn this planet into a paradise for future generations is my afterlife. — E. O. Wilson

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

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. — E. O. Wilson

We exist in a bizarre combination of Stone Age emotions, medieval beliefs, and god-like technology. — E. O. Wilson

An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity. — E. O. Wilson

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

An ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a book-keeper. — E. O. Wilson

I'm very much a Christian in ideals and ethics, especially in terms of belief in fairness, a deep set obligation to others, and the virtues of charity, tolerance and generosity that we associate with traditional Christian teaching. — E. O. Wilson

Evolution by natural selection is not an idle hypothesis. The genetic variation on which selection acts is well understood in principle all the way down to the molecular level. — E. O. Wilson

No statistical proofs exist that prayer reduces illness and mortality, except perhaps through a psychogenic enhancement of the immune system; if it were otherwise the whole world would pray continuously. — E. O. Wilson

To be anthropocentric is to remain unaware of the limits of human nature, the significance of biological processes underlying human behavior, and the deeper meaning of long-term genetic evolution. — E. O. Wilson

I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people, including fundamentalists, are quite intelligent, many of them are highly educated, and they should be treated with complete respect. — E. O. Wilson

Mating Strategy is influenced by the cardinal fact that women have more at stake in sexual activity than men, because of the limited age span in which they can reproduce and the heavy investment required of them with each child conceived. In courtship women consistently emphasize commitment of resources and material security. — E. O. Wilson

Every kid has a bug period, I like to say, and I just got so fascinated and I had that experience, that wonderful life of being able to go out on my own without really any supervision at all. I just lucked out that way. I was trusted as a kid. — E. O. Wilson

We've got paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technologies. — E. O. Wilson

I doubt that most people with short-term thinking love the natural world enough to save it. — E. O. Wilson

Overall, the human brain is the most complex object known in the universe - known, that is, to itself. — E. O. Wilson

The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper — E. O. Wilson

Sstudying ants just quickly became part of me because I was allowed to wander, explore and find things and figure things out myself. And I saw how much was there and what could be done and how I could make a life of it. — E. O. Wilson

It's the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer. — E. O. Wilson

Biology is a science of three dimensions. The first is the study of each species across all levels of biological organization, molecule to cell to organism to population to ecosystem. The second dimension is the diversity of all species in the biosphere. The third dimension is the history of each species in turn, comprising both its genetic evolution and the environmental change that drove the evolution. Biology, by growing in all three dimensions, is progressing toward unification and will continue to do so. — E. O. Wilson

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. — E. O. Wilson

What's been gratifying is to live long enough to see molecular biology and evolutionary biology growing toward each other and uniting in research efforts. — E. O. Wilson

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false. — E. O. Wilson

The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined. — E. O. Wilson

For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization. — E. O. Wilson

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

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. — E. O. Wilson

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. — E. O. Wilson

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

Because the living environment is what really sustains us. — E. O. Wilson

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

When all else fails, men turn to reason. — E. O. Wilson

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

The newborn infant is now seen to be wired with awesome precision ... This marvelous robot will be launched into the world under the care of its parents ... But to what extent does the wiring of the neurons, so undeniably encoded in the genes, preordain the directions that social development will follow? — E. O. Wilson

Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science. — E. O. Wilson

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

The evolutionary epic is ... the best myth we will ever have. — E. O. Wilson

Nature first, then theory. Or, better, Nature and theory closely intertwined while you throw all your intellectual capital at the subject. Love the organisms for themselves first, then strain for general explanations, and, with good fortune, discoveries will follow. If they don't, the love and the pleasure will have been enough. — E. O. Wilson

Wonderful theory, wrong species. (On Marxism, which he considered more suited to ants than to humans. — E. O. Wilson

The human juggernaut is permanently eroding Earth's ancient biosphere. — E. O. Wilson

The solutions like freezing zygotes, fertilized eggs, of all kinds of animals and so on, or keeping them in zoos and having arboreta where we have trees, all these things have been promoted. Even getting the complete genetic code of various fishes so we can let them pass away and then we'll pull them back. That is science fiction run amok. — E. O. Wilson

And pigs may fly. And we may be able to terraform and send surface populations to Mars. And Jesus may come next week anyway, so it doesn't matter one way or the other. All these crazy things run through people's minds. — E. O. Wilson