E. O. Wilson Quotes

146 Sourced Quotes

If enough species are extinguished, will the ecosystems collapse, and will the extinction of most other species follow soon afterward? The only answer anyone can give is: possibly. By the time we find out, however, it might be too late. One planet, one experiment.

E. O. Wilson
Important science is not just any similarity glimpsed for the first time. It offers analogues that map the gateways to unexplored terrain.

E. O. Wilson
The most wonderful mystery of life may well be the means by which it created so much diversity from so little physical matter.

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

E. O. Wilson
Society increasingly has neglected the substructure of biology to its own peril.

E. O. Wilson
Scientists do not discover in order to know, they know in order to discover.

E. O. Wilson
Leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, malignant tertian malaria, filariasis, echinococcosis, onchocerciasis, yellow fever, amoebic dysentery, bleeding bot-fly cysts... evolution has devised a hundred ways to macerate livers and turn blood into a parasite's broth.

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
Like the old god Proteus it [Darwinism] is endless in the form it takes and is therefore filled with the information of realized Nature.

E. O. Wilson
Ecologists, like the organisms they study, cannot make nature conform to their perfect liking.

E. O. Wilson
Whether fully aware of it or not, we human beings are immersed in a world of insects.

E. O. Wilson
Jungles and grasslands are the logical destinations, and towns and farmland the labyrinths that people have imposed between them sometime in the past. I cherish the green enclaves accidentally left behind.

E. O. Wilson
And so the search proceeds relentlessly for natural units until, like the true grail, they are found and all rejoice. Scientific fame awaits those who discover the lines of fracture and the processes by which lesser natural units are joined to create larger natural units.

E. O. Wilson
Progress, then, is a property of the evolution of life as a whole by almost any conceivable intuitive standard.... let us not pretend to deny in our philosophy what we know in our hearts to be true.

E. O. Wilson
Every species lives a life unique to itself, and every species dies a different way.

E. O. Wilson
This is the assembly of life that took a billion years to evolve. It has eaten the storms-folded them into its genes-and created the world that created us. It holds the world steady.

E. O. Wilson
A civilization able to envision God and to embark on the colonization of space will surely find the way to save the integrity of this planet and the magnificent life it harbors.

E. O. Wilson
Now to the heart of wonder. Because species diversity was created prior to humanity, and because we evolved within it, we have never fathomed its limits. As a consequence, the living world is the natural domain of the most restless and paradoxical part of the human spirit.

E. O. Wilson
New knowledge is not science until it is made social. The scientific culture can be defined as new verifiable knowledge secured and distributed with fair credit meticulously given.

E. O. Wilson
Keep in mind that new ideas are commonplace, and almost always wrong. Most flashes of insight lead nowhere; statistically, they have a half-life of hours or maybe days. Most experiments to follow up the surviving insights are tedious and consume large amounts of time, only to yield negative or (worse!) ambiguous results.

E. O. Wilson
If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving little or nothing for livestock, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable land (3.5 billion acres) would support about 10 billion people,

E. O. Wilson
Humanists are the shamans of the intellectual tribe, wise men who interpret knowledge and transmits the folklore, rituals, and sacred texts. Scientists are the scouts and hunters. No one rewards a scientist for what he knows. Nobel Prizes and other trophies are bestowed for the new facts and theories he brings home to the tribe.

E. O. Wilson
The beginning of wisdom, as the Chinese say, is calling things by their right names.

E. O. Wilson
The rise of Darwinism reminds us that a great scientific theory is like a sunrise. It illuminates the steeples of the unknown and then their dark hollows.

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
The foreign policy aim of ants can be summed up as follows: restless aggression, territorial conquest, and genocidal annihilation of neighboring colonies whenever possible. If ants had nuclear weapons, they would probably end the world in a week.

E. O. Wilson