E. O. Wilson Quotes - Page 4

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• I like what Abba Eban once said during the 1967 war. He said, "When all else fails, men turn to reason."

  E. O. Wilson

  Men, Failing, Reason

  "Bill Moyers talks with E.O. Wilson". "Bill Moyers Journal", www.pbs.org. July 6, 2007.

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• If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving little or nothing for livestock, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable land (3.5 billion acres) would support about 10 billion people.

  E. O. Wilson

  Land, People, Support

  "Earth’s Resources for 2015 Have Already Been Used Up" by Jared Green, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 27, 2015.

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• Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we're hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.

  E. O. Wilson

  Religious, Belief, Adaptation

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• We have to create a sustainable environment, worldwide, and we're not doing it. The best thing we can do with the rest of this century is aggressively acquire - and put aside - the richest natural reserves that we can, and then do our best to manage the needs and desires of the 11 billion people we expect to have by the end of the century. This is where biology is headed. For that reason, the sooner we get on with mapping biodiversity on Earth, the better off biology will be - not to mention the whole subject of saving it before we carelessly throw it away.

  E. O. Wilson

  People, Desire, Earth

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

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• Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

  E. O. Wilson

  Nature, Renaissance, Gains

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• I think we will make it. Because one quality people have - certainly Americans have it - is that they can adapt when they see necessity staring them in the face. What to avoid is what someone once called the definition of hell: truth realized too late.

  E. O. Wilson

  Thinking, People, Quality

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• The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.

  E. O. Wilson

  Art, Reductionism, Complexity

  E. O. Wilson (2014). “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge”, p.85, Vintage

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• If insemination were the sole biological function of sex, it could be achieved far more economically in a few seconds of mounting and insertion. Indeed, the least social of mammals mate with scarcely more ceremony. The species that have evolved long-term bonds are also, by and large, the ones that rely on elaborate courtship rituals. . . . Love and sex do indeed go together.

  E. O. Wilson

  Love, Sex, Long

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• From the freedom to explore comes the joy of learning. From knowledge acquired by personal initiative arises the desire for more knowledge. And from mastery of the novel and beautiful world awaiting every child comes self-confidence.

  E. O. Wilson

  Beautiful, Freedom, Children

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

  E. O. Wilson

  Religious, Weakness, Groups

  "Altruistic groups, selfish people win". Bloomberg News Interview, www.postandcourier.com. May 5, 2012.

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• No one knows the diversity in the world, not even to the nearest order of magnitude. ... We don't know for sure how many species there are, where they can be found or how fast they're disappearing. It's like having astronomy without knowing where the stars are.

  E. O. Wilson

  Stars, Order, Knowing

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• The historical circumstance of interest is that the tropical rain forests have persisted over broad parts of the continents since their origins as stronghold of the flowering plants 150 million years ago.

  E. O. Wilson

  Rain, Years, Historical

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• 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.

  E. O. Wilson

  People, Needs, Purpose

  "E.O. Wilson Is on Top of the World". Interview with Jill Neimark, www.psychologytoday.com. September 1, 1998.

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• We've got paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technologies.

  E. O. Wilson

  Technology, Emotion, Medieval

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• 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.

  E. O. Wilson

  Children, Powerful, War

  Source: blog.cleveland.com

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• We use pandas and eagles and things. I'd love to see a wilderness society with an angry-looking wolverine as their logo.

  E. O. Wilson

  Eagles, Pandas, Use

  Source: blog.cleveland.com

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• 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.

  E. O. Wilson

  Race, Order, Diversity

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• 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?

  E. O. Wilson

  Spiritual, Essence, Views

  E. O. Wilson (2014). “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge”, p.391, Vintage

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

  E. O. Wilson

  Three, Environment, Born

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• 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.

  E. O. Wilson

  Failure, Memorable, Successful

  E. O. Wilson (2014). “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge”, p.16, Vintage

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• If someone could actually prove scientifically that there is such a thing as a supernatural force, it would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science. So the notion that somehow scientists are resisting it is ludicrous.

  E. O. Wilson

  Discovery, Supernatural Forces, Would Be

  "E.O. Wilson: What I've Learned" by Tom Junod, www.esquire.com. January 5, 2009.

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• Biophilia: the innate pleasure from living abundance and diversity as manifested by the human impulse to imitate Nature with gardens.

  E. O. Wilson

  Life, Nature, Garden

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• To know how scientists engage in visual imagery is to understand how they think creatively.

  E. O. Wilson

  Thinking, Scientist, Imagery

  "Letters to a Young Scientist". Book by E. O. Wilson, 2013.

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• The newborn infant is now seen to be wired with awesome precision... This marvelous robot will be launched into the world under the care of its parents... But to what extent does the wiring of the neurons, so undeniably encoded in the genes, preordain the directions that social development will follow?

  E. O. Wilson

  Parent, Robots, Doe

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• Known as the biosphere to scientists and as the creation to theologians, all of life together consists of a membrane around earth so thin that it cannot be seen edgewise from a satellite yet so prodigiously diverse that only a tiny fraction of species have been discovered and named.

  E. O. Wilson

  Science, Discovery, Diversity

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