E. O. Wilson Short Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

View all E. O. Wilson Quotes
Who are we to destroy the planet's creation?

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

E. O. Wilson
This planet can be a paradise in the 22nd century.

E. O. Wilson
The laws of biology are written in the language of diversity.

E. O. Wilson
The incest taboo is another major category of primed learning.

E. O. Wilson
The mosquito is an automaton. It can afford to be nothing else.

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

E. O. Wilson
Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.

E. O. Wilson
The emergence of civilization has everywhere followed a definable sequence.

E. O. Wilson
When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

E. O. Wilson
Much of good science — and perhaps all of great science — has its roots in fantasy.

E. O. Wilson
The borderline between normal and schizophrenic people is broad and nearly imperceptible.

E. O. Wilson
In early history phobias might have provided the extra margin needed to insure survival...

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

E. O. Wilson
Evolution on a large scale unfolds, like much of human history, as a succession of dynasties.

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

E. O. Wilson
Genius is the summed production of the many with the names of the few attached for easy recall.

E. O. Wilson
Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.

E. O. Wilson
The true evolutionary epic, retold as poetry, is as intrinsically ennobling as any religious epic.

E. O. Wilson
We are not compelled to believe in biological uniformity in order to affirm human freedom and dignity.

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

E. O. Wilson
Nationalism and racism, to take two examples, are the culturally nurtured outgrowths of simple tribalism.

E. O. Wilson