E. O. Wilson Quotes

146 Sourced Quotes

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
Somewhere close I knew spear-nosed bats flew through the tree crowns in search of fruit, palm vipers coiled in ambush in the roots of orchids, jaguars walked the river's edge; around them eight hundred species of trees stood, more than are native to all of North America; and a thousand species of butterflies, 6 percent of the entire world fauna, waited for the dawn.

E. O. Wilson
The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their effects on the human gene pool. The brain is a product of evolution. Human behavior-like the deepest capacities for emotional respone which drive and guide it-is the circuitous technique by which human genetic material has been and will be kept intact.

E. O. Wilson
Common sense is merely unaided intuition, and unaided intuition is reasoning performed in the absense of instruments and the tested knowledge of science. Common sense tells us that massive satellites cannot hang suspended 36,000 kilometers above the one point on the earth's surface, but they do...

E. O. Wilson
An enduring environmental ethic will aim to preserve not only the health and freedom of our species, but access to the world in which the human spirit was born.

E. O. Wilson
Every human brain is born not as a blank tablet (a tabula rasa) waiting to be filled in by experience but as 'an exposed negative waiting to be slipped into developer fluid'.
On the nature v. nurture debate

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

E. O. Wilson
Scientists, I believe, are divided into two categories: those who do science in order to be a success in life, and those who become a success in life in order to do science.

E. O. Wilson
The worst thing that can happen during the 1980s is not energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s 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 that our descendents are least likely to forgive us.

E. O. Wilson
Because it is... far slower than Lamarckian evolution, biological evolution is always quickly outrun by cultural change.

E. O. Wilson
It's [the loss of species] like having astronomy without knowing where the stars are.

E. O. Wilson
Old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

E. O. Wilson
We can search among the unconscious, emotion-laden learning rules for the kind of behavior most directly influenced by genetic evolution.

E. O. Wilson
Our sense of wonder grows exponentially: the greater the knowledge, the deeper the mystery and the more we seek knowledge to create new mystery.

E. O. Wilson
Animals use aggression as a technique for gaining control over necessities... that are scarce or are likely to become so... They intensify their threats and attack with increasing frequency as the population around them grow. As a result the behavior itself induces members of the population to spread out in space, raises the death rate, and lowers the birth rate. In such cases aggression is said to be a "density-dependent factor" in controlling population growth.

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

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

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
Who are we to destroy the planet's creation?

E. O. Wilson
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?

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
Most kinds of aggressive behavior among members of the same species are responsive to crowding in the environment.

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

E. O. Wilson
Stable climates with muted seasons allow more kinds of organisms to specialize on narrower pieces of the environment, to outcompete the generalists around them, and so persist for longer periods of time. Species are packed more tightly. No niche, it seems goes unfilled. Specialization is likely to be pushed to bizarre, beautiful extremes.

E. O. Wilson