Quotes from E. O. Wilson

The two major challenges for the 21st century are to improve the economic situation of the majority and save as much of the planet as we can.

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.

You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.

I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people, including fundamentalists, are quite intelligent, many of them are highly educated, and they should be treated with complete respect.

Jehovah had nothing to say to Moses and the others about the care of the planet. He had plenty to say about tribal loyalty and conquest.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

I grew up as a Southern Baptist with strict adherence to the Bible, which I read as a youngster.

I think that's my nature, to want to bring people together rather than to try to bombard them into agreement.

Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.

In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.

Ants make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects. There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost nothing about them.

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.

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

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.

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.

The beginning of wisdom, as the Chinese say, is calling things by their right names.

America in particular imposes an horrendous burden on the world. We have this wonderful standard of living but it comes at enormous cost.

There doesn't seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.

So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world.

When you get into the whole field of exploring, probably 90 percent of the kinds of organisms, plants, animals and especially microorganisms and tiny invertebrate animals are unknown. Then you realize that we live on a relatively unexplored plan.

One difference between ants and humans is that while ants send their old women off to war, humans send their young men.

It's like having astronomy without knowing where the stars are.

People respect nonfiction but they read novels.

In a purely technical sense, each species of higher organism-beetle, moss, and so forth, is richer in information than a Caravaggio painting, Mozart symphony, or any other great work of art.