E. O. Wilson

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

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

In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.

Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.

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.

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.

If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.

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.

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

When you get into the whole field of exploring, probably 90 percent of the kinds of organisms, plants, animals and especially microorganisms and tiny invertebrate animals are unknown. Then you realize that we live on a relatively unexplored plan.

Real biologists who actually do the research will tell you that they almost never find a phenomenon, no matter how odd or irrelevant it looks when they first see it, that doesn't prove to serve a function. The outcome itself may be due to small accidents of evolution.

I was a senior in high school when I decided I wanted to work on ants as a career. I just fell in love with them, and have never regretted it.

I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn't intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife.

What we need is an electronic encyclopedia of life, with one page for each species. On each page is given everything known about that species.

In my heart, I'm an Alabaman who went up north to work.

Once I feel I'm right, I have enjoyed provoking.

Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it's a map with constant immediate sensory input.

I've found that good dialogue tells you not only what people are saying or how they're communicating but it tells you a great deal - by dialect and tone, content and circumstance - about the quality of the character.

All three of the Abrahamic religions were born and nurtured in arid, disturbed environments.

It's always been a dream of mine, of exploring the living world, of classifying all the species and finding out what makes up the biosphere.

Companies that are willing to share, to withhold in order to further the growth of the company, willing to try to get a better atmosphere through a demonstration of democratic principles, fairness and cooperation, a better product, those will win in the end.

Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.

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.

Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.

You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.

People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.

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

The ant world is a tumult, a noisy world of pheromones being passed back and forth.

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.

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

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

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?

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.

The human juggernaut is permanently eroding Earth's ancient biosphere.

Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.

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

Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.

Well, let me tell you, ants are the dominant insects. They make up as much as a quarter of the biomass of all insects in the world. They are the principal predators. They're the cemetery workers.

Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.