E. O. Wilson quotes

If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. (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.
E. O. Wilson
Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.
E. O. Wilson
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.
E. O. Wilson
The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper.
E. O. Wilson
This planet can be a paradise in the 22nd century.
E. O. Wilson
True character arises from a deeper well than religion.
E. O. Wilson
Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.
E. O. Wilson
There is no better high than discovery.
E. O. Wilson
Old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
E. O. Wilson
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. (E. O. Wilson)
To search for unasked questions, plus questions to put to already acquired but unsought answers, it is vital to give full play to the imagination. That is the way to create truly original science.
E. O. Wilson
The worst thing that will probably happen-in fact is already well underway-is not energy depletion, economic collapse, conventional war, or the expansion of totalitarian governments. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired in a few generations. The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.
E. O. Wilson
When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
E. O. Wilson
The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.
E. O. Wilson
To know how scientists engage in visual imagery is to understand how they think creatively.
E. O. Wilson
The genius of human society is in fact the ease with which alliances are formed, broken, and reconstituted, always with strong emotional appeals to rules believed to be absolute.
E. O. Wilson
The evolutionary epic is ... the best myth we will ever have.
E. O. Wilson
Daily life is a comprimised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes. ...Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism, and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence.
E. O. Wilson
The naturalist is a civilized hunter. He goes alone into the field or woodland and closes his mind to everything but that time and place, so that life around him presses in on all the senses and small details grow in significance. He begins the scanning search for which cognition was engineered. His mind becomes unfocused, it focuses on everything, no longer directed toward any ordinary task or social pleasantry.
E. O. Wilson
Be prepared mentally for some amount of chaos and failure. Waste and frustration often attend the earliest stages. (E. O. Wilson)
The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured- especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised.
E. O. Wilson
Much of good science - and perhaps all of great science - has its roots in fantasy.
E. O. Wilson
Genetic determinism... On its interpretation depends the entire relation between biology and the social sciences.
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