E. O. Wilson - Years Quotes

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Few will doubt that humankind has created a planet-sized problem for itself. No one wished it so, but we are the first species to become a geophysical force, altering Earth's climate, a role previously reserved for tectonics, sun flares, and glacial cycles. We are also the greatest destroyer of life since the ten-kilometer-wide meteorite that landed near Yucatan and ended the Age of Reptiles sixty-five million years ago. Through overpopulation we have put ourselves in danger of running out of food and water. So a very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.

E. O. Wilson
The increase in brain size and refinement of stone artifacts point to an unbroken advance in mental ability over the last two or three million years.... No organ in the history of life has grown faster.

E. O. Wilson
"Will we solve the crises of next hundred years?" asked Krulwich. "Yes, if we are honest and smart," said Wilson. The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall. Until we understand ourselves, concluded the Pulitzer-prize winning author of On Human Nature, until we answer those huge questions of philosophy that the philosophers abandoned a couple of generations ago—Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?—rationally, we're on very thin ground.

E. O. Wilson
Primitive men are ecological analogs of lions, wolves, and hyenas... they have adopted pack hunting in the pursuit of big game.... habitually slaughtering surplus prey, storing food, feeding solid food to their young, dividing labor, practicing cannibalism, and interacting aggressively with competing species.... this way of life persisted for millions of years or longer and was abandoned in most societies only during the last few thousand years.

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
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