Quotessence
Home / Authors / E. O. Wilson Books
E. O. Wilson

E. O. Wilson Books

Biologist

Related Quotes

“We should not knowingly allow any species or race to go extinct. And let us go beyond mere salvage to begin the restoration of natural environments, in order to enlarge wild populations and stanch the hemorrhaging of biological wealth. There can be no purpose more enspiriting than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.”

ShouldStillsAgePurposeOrderNaturalWealthRaceEnvironmentDiversityMereSpeciesPopulationSurroundRestorationWondrousNatural EnvironmentSalvageDiversity Of Life
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image

“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.”

LittlesSelfLife IsExistenceWonderClassRolesModernMiddleConditionsIdentitySourceReturnDegreesMajorsCrisisSakeDefinedRevelationsMiddle ClassDaily LifeUrbanTrue SelfAcheStressfulIdentity CrisisRole PlayingSelf Revelation
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image

“Science offers the boldest metaphysics of the age. It is a thoroughly human construct, driven by the faith that if we dream, press to discover, explain, and dream again, thereby plunging repeatedly into new terrain, the world will somehow come clearer and we will grasp the true strangeness of the universe. And the strangeness will all prove to be connected, and make sense.”

IfsWorldHumansDreamAgeFaithUniverseOffersProvePressesConnectedDrivenMake SenseMetaphysicsConstructsStrangenessTerrain
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image

“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.”

MindSocialGrowsFieldsOrdinaryTasksPressesDetailsSensesSignificanceCivilizedHuntersCognitionNaturalistWoodlandSmall DetailsScanningPleasantries
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image

“Yes, the natural sciences are telling us a great deal about human origins, the origins of our species the origins of our minds; we're on our way to explaining a large part of it. I'll accept an answer provided only by such means as obtaining and exploring, analyzing and arguing over the evidence - not because of a scribe's myopic view of the subject written 500 years before the birth of Christ!”

WayYearsMindHumansMeanChristNaturalAnswersViewsDealsAcceptingWrittenAtheismSubjectsBirthEvidenceSpeciesPositive AtheismArguingExploringExplainingAnalyzingObtainingNatural ScienceMyopicScribes
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image

“By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified. Today the greatest divide within humanity is not between races, or religions, or even, as is widely believed, between the literate and illiterate. It is the chasm that separates scientific from prescientific cultures.”

TodayReligionHumanityCultureRaceAchievementEnlightenmentReasonableDividesThinkerJustifiedIlliterateChasmsEnlightenment Thinkers
Book:Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Create image

“[P]rescientific people... could never guess the nature of physical reality beyond the tiny sphere attainable by unaided common sense. Nothing else ever worked, no exercise from myth, revelation, art, trance, or any other conceivable means; and notwithstanding the emotional satisfaction it gives, mysticism, the strongest prescientific probe in the unknown, has yielded zero.”

PeopleGivingMeanArtRealityReligionCommonEmotionalExerciseSatisfactionMythTinyCommon SenseRevelationsMysticismStrongestZeroSpheresTrance
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image

“Somewhere close I knew spear-nosed bats flew through the tree crowns in search of fruit, palm vipers coiled in ambush in the roots of orchids, jaguars walked the river's edge; around them eight hundred species of trees stood, more than are native to all of North America; and a thousand species of butterflies, 6 percent of the entire world fauna, waited for the dawn.”

WorldAmericaTreeThousandPercentHundredRiversRootsSpeciesFruitEdgesEightDawnNativeButterflyCrownsBatsPalmsFlewSpearsNorth AmericaBiodiversityOrchidsAmbushVipersJaguars
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image

“Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society. If one colony member devotes its life to service over marriage, the individual is of benefit to the society, even though it does not have personal offspring. A soldier going into battle will benefit his country, but he runs a higher risk of death than one who does not. An altruist benefits the group, but a layabout or coward who saves his own energy and reduces his bodily risk passes the resulting social cost to others.”

IfsDoeCountryRunningIndividualEnergySocialSinResultsVirtueRiskGroupsHigherBattleCostMembersBenefitsSoldierSelfishnessCowardAltruismVersusSelectionOffspringColony
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image

“While ants exist in just the right numbers for the rest of the living world, humans have become too numerous. If we were to vanish today, the land environment would return to the fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion. Only a dozen or so species, among which are the crab louse and a mite that lives in the oil glands of our foreheads, depend on us entirely. But if ants were to disappear, tens of thousands of other plants and animal species would perish also, simplifying and weakening land ecosystems almost everywhere.”

IfsWorldHumansTodayAnimalNumbersEnvironmentLandDependsReturnBalancePlantSpeciesPopulationOilDisappearDozenExplosionsAntsForeheadsEcosystemsFertileWeakeningCrabsPlants And AnimalsGlandsHuman PopulationPopulation Explosion
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image

“On the lawn next to the sidewalk a fire ant colony is swarming. The ants are pouring out of a mound nest, here no more than an irregular pile of dirt partly flattened by the last pass of a lawnmower. Winged queens and males are taking off on their nuptial flight, protected by angry-looking workers that run up and down the grass blades and out onto the blistering-hot concrete of the sidewalk. The species is unmistakably Solenopsis geminata, the native fire ant.”

RunningLastsNextFireHotAngrySpeciesWorkersMalesFlightGrassQueensNativeConcreteProtectedDirtBladesUp And DownAntsNestsPouringLawnsColonySidewalk
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image

“The paradox is that, by children taking shortcuts through computer games, through fantasies, through movies that load on all the emotional stimulation of encountering life in a stylized way - all of this is the equivalent of mainlining of paleolithic emotions, emotions about combat, about personal success, about overcoming monsters, about making powerful friendships, about winning wars and entering new territory.”

WayChildrenWarGamesWinningPowerfulEmotionFantasyEmotionalComputerOvercomingMonstersParadoxTerritoryCombatLoadEnteringShortcutsStimulationPersonal SuccessNew TerritoryComputer Games
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image

“The solutions like freezing zygotes, fertilized eggs, of all kinds of animals and so on, or keeping them in zoos and having arboreta where we have trees, all these things have been promoted. Even getting the complete genetic code of various fishes so we can let them pass away and then we'll pull them back. That is science fiction run amok.”

KindHas BeensRunningAnimalFictionTreeSolutionsScience FictionFishesVariousAll KindsCodeEggsPassing AwayZoosFreezing
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image

“We don't even know what species are out there, for the most part, particularly when you get down to the microbes and very small invertebrates. They make up the mass of the organisms around us, including the soil we depend on, the soil of cornfields as well as hardwood forests. We haven't taken ecology to the point where we can even make a crude prediction of what's going to happen when we've reduced the living world down to a certain level.”

KnowsWorldWellsHappensCertainLevelsTakenHavensDependsMassSpeciesIncludingForestsSoilOrganismsEcologyPredictionsCrudeMicrobesHardwoodInvertebrates
Author:E. O. Wilson
Create image