Top 180 E. O. Wilson Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “In science, obsessiveness under psychological control can be a virtue.”

— E. O. Wilson

152. “I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn’t intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife.”

— E. O. Wilson

153. “Genius is the summed production of the many with the names of the few attached for easy recall.”

— E. O. Wilson

154. “In science, you really do need to have a purpose-driven life. You will succeed to the extent that you get the most out of your career so that you can give the most back. Try to be an addict, driven to achieve discoveries, learning new things, and then writing about them.”

— E. O. Wilson

155. “What’s been gratifying is to live long enough to see molecular biology and evolutionary biology growing toward each other and uniting in research efforts.”

— E. O. Wilson

156. “I was a senior in high school when I decided I wanted to work on ants as a career. I just fell in love with them, and have never regretted it.”

— E. O. Wilson

157. “Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.”

— E. O. Wilson

158. “Companies that are willing to share, to withhold in order to further the growth of the company, willing to try to get a better atmosphere through a demonstration of democratic principles, fairness and cooperation, a better product, those will win in the end.”

— E. O. Wilson

159. “Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind.”

— E. O. Wilson

160. “So, the ant way of life is very ancient and very successful. As far as human beings are concerned, we’ve been around for only one million years – too soon be sure.”

— E. O. Wilson

161. “We don’t need to clear the 4 to 6 percent of the Earth’s surface remaining in tropical rain forests, with most of the animal and plant species living there.”

— E. O. Wilson

162. “The genius of human society is in fact the ease with which alliances are formed, broken, and reconstituted, always with strong emotional appeals to rules believed to be absolute.”

— E. O. Wilson

163. “To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.”

— E. O. Wilson

164. “Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition.”

— E. O. Wilson

165. “Human beings function better if they are deceived by their genes into thinking that there is a disinterested objective morality binding upon them, which all should obey.”

— E. O. Wilson

166. “The diversity of life forms, so numerous that we have yet to identify most of them, is the greatest wonder on this planet.”

— E. O. Wilson

167. “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

168. “In my heart, I’m an Alabaman who went up north to work.”

— E. O. Wilson

169. “The human juggernaut is permanently eroding Earth’s ancient biosphere.”

— E. O. Wilson

170. “I see no way out of the problems that organized religion and tribalism create other than humans just becoming more honest and fully aware of themselves.”

— E. O. Wilson

171. “The growth of a naturalist is like the growth of a musician or athlete: excellence for the talented, lifelong enjoyment for the rest, benefit for humanity.”

— E. O. Wilson

172. “Ants are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them.”

— E. O. Wilson

173. “For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.”

— E. O. Wilson

174. “Theology made no provision for evolution.”

— E. O. Wilson

175. “Much of good science and perhaps all of great science has its roots in fantasy.”

— E. O. Wilson

176. “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.”

— E. O. Wilson

177. “In some ways, I had a traditional ‘old South’ upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an inoculum of the military ethic that is still with me today: honor, duty, loyalty.”

— E. O. Wilson

178. “Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year.”

— E. O. Wilson

179. “We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It’s about conflicts between creation stories.”

— E. O. Wilson

180. “Sstudying ants just quickly became part of me because I was allowed to wander, explore and find things and figure things out myself. And I saw how much was there and what could be done and how I could make a life of it.”

— E. O. Wilson

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

— E. O. Wilson

182. “Once I feel I’m right, I have enjoyed provoking.”

— E. O. Wilson

183. “The commitment must be much deeper – to let no species knowingly die; to take all reasonable action to protect every species and race in perpetuity.”

— E. O. Wilson

184. “The cost of scientific advance is the humbling recognition that reality was not constructed to be easily grasped by the human mind. This is the cardinal tenet of scientific understanding. Our species and its ways of thinking are a product of evolution, not the purpose of evolution.”

— E. O. Wilson

185. “I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.”

— E. O. Wilson

186. “In 2010, my two Harvard mathematician colleagues and I dismantled kin-selection theory, which was the reigning theory of the origin of altruism at the time.”

— E. O. Wilson

187. “People yearn to be in one of the best – a combat marine regiment, an elite college, the executive committee of a company, a religious sect, a fraternity, a garden club – any collectivity that can be compared favorably with other, competing groups.”

— E. O. Wilson

188. “Not all ants use violence to dominate their world, some use more subtle methods.”

— E. O. Wilson

189. “The brain and its satellite glands have now been probed to the point where no particular site remains that can reasonably be supposed to harbor a nonphysical mind.”

— E. O. Wilson

190. “I believe that traditional religious belief and scientific knowledge depict the universe in radically different ways. At the bedrock they are incompatible and mutually exclusive.”

— E. O. Wilson

191. “What we need is an electronic encyclopedia of life, with one page for each species. On each page is given everything known about that species.”

— E. O. Wilson

192. “It was inspiring to learn of the new Bachelor of Environmental Studies Program, and I congratulate you for it. Singapore is geographically in the right central position for an influence in Asia and Australia, and NUS has the reputation and academic strength to make it effective.”

— E. O. Wilson

193. “Adults forget the depths of languor into which the adolescent mind decends with ease. They are prone to undervalue the mental growth that occurs during daydreaming and aimless wandering.”

— E. O. Wilson

194. “Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.”

— E. O. Wilson

195. “Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety.”

— E. O. Wilson

196. “Science is the global civilization of which I am a citizen. The spread of its democratic ethic and its unifying powers provides my faith in humanity. The astonishing depths of wonders in the universe, continuously revealed by science is my temple. The capacity of the informed human mind, liberated at last by the understanding that we are alone and thus the sole stewards of earth, is my religion. The potential of humanity to turn this planet into a paradise for future generations is my afterlife.”

— E. O. Wilson