Edward O. Wilson Quotes

There is no better high than discovery.

~ Edward O. Wilson

People would rather believe than know.

~ Edward O. Wilson

Science, its imperfections notwithstanding, is the sword in the stone that humanity finally pulled. The question it poses, of universal and orderly materialism, is the most important that can be asked in philosophy and religion.

~ Edward O. Wilson

Humanity is a biological species, living in a biological environment, because like all species, we are exquisitely adapted in everything: from our behavior, to our genetics, to our physiology, to that particular environment in which we live. The earth is our home. Unless we preserve the rest of life, as a sacred duty, we will be endangering ourselves by destroying the home in which we evolved, and on which we completely depend.

~ Edward O. Wilson

Very often ambition and entrepreneurial drive, in combination, beat brilliance.

~ Edward 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.

~ Edward O. Wilson

The race is now on between the technoscientific and scientific forces that are destroying the living environment and those that can be harnessed to save it. . . . If the race is won, humanity can emerge in far better condition than when it entered, and with most of the diversity of life still intact.

~ Edward O. Wilson

They travel long distances to stroll along the seashore, for reasons they can't put into words.

~ Edward O. Wilson

Human beings were made for music. Its thrill and rapture are picked up almost immediately by little children

~ Edward O. Wilson

The best way to live in this real world is to free ourselves of demons and tribal gods.

~ Edward O. Wilson

Human beings appear to be sufficiently selfish and calculating to be capable of indefinitely greater harmony and social homeostasis. This statement is not self-contradictory. True selfishness, if obedient to the other constraints of mammalian biology, is the key to a more nearly perfect social contract. - pg. 157

~ Edward O. Wilson

We are a biological species arising from Earth’s biosphere as one adapted species among many; and however splendid our languages and cultures, however rich and subtle our minds, however vast our creative powers, the mental process is the product of a brain shaped by the hammer of natural selection upon the anvil of nature.

~ Edward O. Wilson

The predisposition to religious belief is an ineradicable part of human behavior. Mankind has produced 100,000 religions. It is an illusion to think that scientific humanism and learning will dispel religious belief. Men would rather believe than know... A kind of Darwinistic survival of the fittest has occurred with religions... The ecological principle called Gause's law holds that competition is maximal between species with identical needs... Even submission to secular religions such as Communism and guru cults involve willing subordination of the individual to the group. Religious practices confer biological advantage. The mechanisms of religion include (1) objectification (the reduction of reality to images and definitions that are easily understood and cannot be refuted), (2) commitment through faith (a kind of tribalism enacted through self-surrender), (3) and myth (the narratives that explain the tribe's favored position on the earth, often incorporating supernatural forces struggling for control, apocalypse, and millennium).

~ Edward O. Wilson

You teach me, I forget. You show me, I remember. You involve me, I understand.

~ Edward O. Wilson

[Scientific humanism is] the only worldview compatible with science's growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature.

~ Edward O. Wilson

Social intelligence was therefore always at a high premium. A sharp sense of empathy can make a huge difference, and with it in an ability to manipulate, to gain cooperation, and to deceive.

~ Edward O. Wilson

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

~ Edward O. Wilson

And we really should be considering the moral implications of what we're doing. What kind of a species are we that we treat the rest of life so cheaply? There are those who think that's the destiny of Earth: We arrived, we're humanizing the Earth, and it will be the destiny of Earth for us to wipe humans out and most of the rest of biodiversity. But I think the great majority of thoughtful people consider that a morally wrong position to take, and a very dangerous one.

~ Edward O. Wilson

Another principle that I believe can be justified by scientific evidence so far is that nobody is going to emigrate from this planet not ever....It will be far cheaper, and entail no risk to human life, to explore space with robots. The technology is already well along....the real thrill will be in learning in detail what is out there...It is an especially dangerous delusion if we see emigration into space as a solution to be taken when we have used up this planet....Earth, by the twenty-second century, can be turned, if we so wish, into a permanent paradise for human beings...

~ Edward O. Wilson

Real scientists do not take vacations. They take field trips...

~ Edward O. Wilson

If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so much in the survival of our own species as in the fulfillment of the ultimate irony of organic evolution: that in the instant of achieving self-understanding through the mind of man, life has doomed its most beautiful creations.

~ Edward O. Wilson

[S]elfish members win within groups, but groups of altruists best groups of selfish members. (63)

~ Edward O. Wilson

All my life I have placed great store in civility and good manners, practices I find scarce among the often hard-edged, badly socialized scientists with whom I associate. Tone of voice means a great deal to me in the course of debate. I despise the arrogance and doting self-regard so frequently found among the very bright.

~ Edward O. Wilson

A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree.

~ Edward O. Wilson