Quotes from Edward O. Wilson

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

People would rather believe than know.

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

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

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

There is no better high than discovery.

In the end ... success or failure will come down to an ethical decision, one on which those now living will be judged for generations to come.

The competition between the two forces can be succinctly expressed as follows: Within groups selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, but groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. Or, risking oversimplification, individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue.

The most successful scientist thinks like a poet—wide-ranging, sometimes fantastical—and works like a bookkeeper. It is the latter role that the world sees.

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.

There must be an ability to pass long hours in study and research with pleasure even though some of the effort will inevitably lead to dead ends. Such is the price of admission.

The true cause of hatred and violence is faith versus faith, an outward expression of the ancient instinct of tribalism.

Here indeed is a major difference between people and ants: where we send our young men to war, ants send their old ladies. No moral lesson there, unless you are looking for a less expensive form of elder care.

Nevertheless, an iron rule exists in genetic social evolution. It is that selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals, while groups of altruists beat groups of selfish individuals. The victory can never be complete; the balance of selection pressures cannot move to either extreme. If individual selection were to dominate, societies would dissolve. If group selection were to dominate, human groups would come to resemble ant colonies.

Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings.

The creation myth is a Darwinian device for survival.

Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.

All things being equal (fortunately things are seldom equal, not exactly), people prefer to be with others who look like them, speak the same dialect, and hold the same beliefs. An amplification of this evidently inborn predisposition leads with frightening ease to racism and religious bigotry. Then, also with frightening ease, good people do bad things. I know this truth from experience, having grown up in the Deep South during the 1930s

For the entire course of evolution leading from our primitive mammalian forebears of a hundred million years ago to the single lineage that threaded its way to become the first Homo sapiens, the total number of individuals it required might have been one hundred billion. Unknowingly, they all lived and died for us. (21)

The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have not viewed the world.

We need freedom to roam across land owned by no one but protected by all, whose unchanging horizon is the same that bounded the world of our millennial ancestors.

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

A society that condemns homosexuality harms itself. (254)

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.