Top 70 Edward O. Wilson Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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.”

— Edward O. Wilson

2. “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”

— Edward O. Wilson

3. “People would rather believe than know.”

— Edward O. Wilson

4. “Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species.”

— Edward O. Wilson

5. “Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.”

— Edward O. Wilson

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

— Edward O. Wilson

7. “People are prone to ethnocentrism. It is an uncomfortable fact that even when given a guilt-free choice, individuals prefer the company of others of the same race, nation, clan, and religion. They.”

— Edward O. Wilson

8. “We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.”

— Edward O. Wilson

9. “The human impact on biodiversity, to put the matter as briefly as possible, is an attack on ourselves.”

— Edward O. Wilson

10. “We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.”

— Edward O. Wilson

11. “To make discoveries in science, both small and important, you must be an expert on the topic addressed. To be an expert innovator requires commitment. Commitment to a subject implies sustained hard work.”

— Edward O. Wilson

12. “Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the ‘environmentalist’ view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.”

— Edward O. Wilson

13. “When the great theologian and philosopher Rabbi Hillel was challenged to explain the Torah in the time he could stand on one foot, he replied, “Do not do unto others that which is repugnant to you. All else is commentary.”

— Edward O. Wilson

14. “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

15. “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.”

— Edward O. Wilson

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

— Edward O. Wilson

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

— Edward O. Wilson

18. “When an individual is cooperative and altruistic, this reduces his advantage in competition to a comparable degree with other members but increases the survival and reproduction rate of the group as a whole. In a nutshell, individual selection favors what we call sin and group selection favors virtue. The result is the internal conflict of conscience that afflicts all but psychopaths, estimated fortunately to make up only 1 to 4 percent of the population.”

— Edward O. Wilson

19. “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.”

— Edward O. Wilson

20. “The origin of the human condition is best explained by the natural selection for social interaction – the inherited propensities to communicate, recognize, evaluate, bond, cooperate, compete, and from all these the deep warm pleasure of belonging to your own special group.”

— Edward O. Wilson

21. “The greater problems of history are not solved; they are merely forgotten.”

— Edward O. Wilson

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

— Edward O. Wilson

23. “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.”

— Edward O. Wilson

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

— Edward O. Wilson

25. “If the heuristic and analytic power of science can be joined with the introspective creativity of the humanities, human existence will rise to an infinitely more productive and interesting meaning.”

— Edward O. Wilson

26. “There is no solution available, I assure you, to save Earth’s biodiversity other than the preservation of natural environments in reserves large enough to maintain wild populations sustainably. Only Nature can serve as the planetary ark.”

— Edward O. Wilson

27. “Splendor awaits in minute proportions.”

— Edward O. Wilson

28. “Natural selection, the driving force of biological evolution in both individual and group selection, is captured in a single phrase: mutation proposes, the environment disposes.”

— Edward O. Wilson

29. “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.”

— Edward O. Wilson

30. “A typical battlefield of this struggle is Hawaii, America’s most deceptively beautiful state. For most residents and visitors, it seems an unspoiled island paradise. In actuality it is a killing field of biological diversity. When.”

— Edward O. Wilson

31. “Human existence may be simpler than we thought. There is no predestination, no unfathomed mystery of life. Demons and gods do not vie for our allegiance. Instead, we are self-made, independent, alone, and fragile, a biological species adapted to live in a biological world. What counts for long-term survival is intelligent self-understanding, based upon a greater independence of thought than that tolerated today even in our most advanced democratic societies.”

— Edward O. Wilson

32. “They travel long distances to stroll along the seashore, for reasons they can’t put into words.”

— Edward O. Wilson

33. “To explore and affiliate with life is a deep and complicated process in mental development. To an extent still undervalued in philosophy and religion, our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it hope rises on its currents.”

— Edward O. Wilson

34. “Human beings and their social orders are intrinsically imperfectible and fortunately so. In a constantly changing world, we need the flexibility that only imperfection provides.”

— Edward O. Wilson

35. “It should not be thought that war, often accompanied by genocide, is a cultural artifact of a few societies. Nor has it been an aberration of history, a result of the growing pains of our species’ maturation. Wars and genocide have been universal and eternal, respecting no particular time or culture.”

— Edward O. Wilson

36. “We are all genetic chimeras, at once saints and sinners, champions of the truth and hypocrites – not because humanity has failed to reach some foreordained religious or ideological ideal, but because of the way our species originated across millions of years of biological evolution.”

— Edward O. Wilson

37. “There is no dispute between me and Richard Dawkins and there never has been, because he’s a journalist, and journalists are people that report what the scientists have found and the arguments I’ve had have actually been with scientists doing research.”

— Edward O. Wilson

38. “Socialism really works under some circumstances. Karl Marx just had the wrong species.”

— Edward O. Wilson

39. “Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.”

— Edward O. Wilson

40. “TO FORM GROUPS, drawing visceral comfort and pride from familiar fellowship, and to defend the group enthusiastically against rival groups – these are among the absolute universals of human nature and hence of culture.”

— Edward O. Wilson

41. “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

42. “Preferring a search for objective reality over revelation is another way of satisfying religious hunger.”

— Edward O. Wilson

43. “The great religions are also, and tragically, sources of ceaseless and unnecessary suffering. They are impediments to the grasp of reality needed to solve most social problems in the real world.”

— Edward O. Wilson

44. “In America, for example, it is possible in most places to openly debate different views on religious spirituality – including the nature and even the existence of God, providing it is in the context of theology and philosophy. But it is forbidden to question closely, if at all, the creation myth – the faith – of another person or group, no matter how absurd. To disparage anything in someone else’s sacred creation myth is “religious bigotry.” It is taken as the equivalent of a personal threat.”

— Edward O. Wilson

45. “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

46. “Despite all of our pretenses and fantasies, we always have been and will remain a biological species tied to this particular biological world. Millions of years of evolution are indelibly encoded in our genes. History without the wildlands is no history at all.”

— Edward O. Wilson

47. “Much of culture, including especially the content of the creative arts, has arisen from the inevitable clash of individual selection and group selection.”

— Edward O. Wilson

48. “Real scientists do not take vacations. They take field trips...”

— Edward O. Wilson

49. “To give in completely to the instinctual urgings born from individual selection would be to dissolve society. At the opposite extreme, to surrender to the urgings from group selection would turn us into angelic robots – the outsized equivalents of ants.”

— Edward O. Wilson

50. “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.”

— Edward O. Wilson