E.O. Wilson

The greatest wealth is health.

The greatest art is the art of living.

The greatest lesson I have learned from nature is that everything is connected.

The greatest gift of science is the ability to understand the world around us.

The greatest responsibility we have is to protect the planet for future generations.

The greatest power we have is the power to choose.

The greatest adventure is to live a life of purpose.

The greatest challenge of our time is to reconcile our technological prowess with our ecological responsibility.

The greatest joy of discovery is to share it with others.

The greatest hope for humanity is to find a way to live sustainably on Earth.

The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is ungovernable by present institutions.

Blind faith, no matter how passionately it is held, is always a ground for skepticism.

The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct itself will be the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.

People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another.

The true evolutionary epic, retold as poetry, is as intrinsically ennobling as any religious epic.

Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the gossip of the day, the murmur of the dove.

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had abetted the worst intellectual error of post-Exilic Jewish society. The poor, uneducated author of Genesis had not been able to see the forest for the trees.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time.

The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.