Edward O. Wilson

The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper.

We are not afraid of predators, we are transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival. In a deeply tribal sense, we love our monsters.

The first rule of climate is that it changes.

The human species is far more likely to be changed by its technology than to be destroyed by it.

The evolutionary epic is mythology in the sense that the laws it adduces are here and now, as repetitious and stable as those of traditional religion.

The biologist, who is concerned with questions of physiology and biochemistry, who looks at the world as a complex system of molecular interactions, is not likely to have much sympathy with the view that life is a miracle.

The genetic basis of social behavior is the last great frontier of evolutionary biology.

The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their effects on the human gene pool.

To know the world, you must first know a place.

The great challenge of the twenty-first century is to raise people everywhere to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible.

The conservation of our natural resources and the preservation of our natural environment are not just political issues; they are moral imperatives.

The more closely we identify ourselves with the rest of life, the more quickly we will be able to discover the sources of human sensibility and acquire the knowledge on which an enduring ethic, a sense of preferred direction, can be built.

The central idea of the consilience world view is that all tangible phenomena, from the birth of stars to the workings of social institutions, are based on material processes that are ultimately reducible, however long and tortuous the sequences, to the laws of physics.

The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology.

The species is the fundamental unit of evolution.

We are not so far from our ancestors of a million years ago, who sat around campfires telling stories.

The key to understanding humanity is in the study of social insects.

The great diversity of life is not a mere luxury; it is a necessity for the health of the planet and our own survival.

The drive to be moral is as much a product of evolution as the drive to eat and reproduce.

The future of conservation is in the hands of the world's youth.