E. O. Wilson quotes - page 7

In some ways, I had a traditional 'old South' upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an inoculum of the military ethic that is still with me today: honor, duty, loyalty. (E. O. Wilson)
I doubt that most people with short-term thinking love the natural world enough to save it. View quote
E. O. Wilson
Once I feel I'm right, I have enjoyed provoking. View quote
E. O. Wilson
The human juggernaut is permanently eroding Earth's ancient biosphere. View quote
E. O. Wilson
People respect nonfiction but they read novels. View quote
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. View quote
E. O. Wilson
Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society. View quote
E. O. Wilson
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. View quote
E. O. Wilson
What's been gratifying is to live long enough to see molecular biology and evolutionary biology growing toward each other and uniting in research efforts. View quote
E. O. Wilson
In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner. View quote
E. O. Wilson
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. (E. O. Wilson)
There doesn't seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs. View quote
E. O. Wilson
Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it's a map with constant immediate sensory input. View quote
E. O. Wilson
It's always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That's just in human relationships. View quote
E. O. Wilson
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. View quote
E. O. Wilson
It's like having astronomy without knowing where the stars are. View quote
E. O. Wilson
'The Creation' presents an argument for saving biological diversity on Earth. Most of the book is for as broad an audience as possible. View quote
E. O. Wilson
Secular humanists can sit around and talk about their love of humanity, but it doesn't stack up against a two-millennium-old funeral high mass. View quote
E. O. Wilson
Samuel Butler's famous aphorism that the chicken is only an egg's way of making another egg has been modernized: the organism is only DNA's way of making more DNA. View quote
E. O. Wilson
True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety. View quote
E. O. Wilson
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)