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Top Edward O Wilson Quotes

Browse top 28 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Edward O Wilson.

Favorite Edward O Wilson Quotes

1. "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
2. "One planet, one experiment." ~ Edward O. Wilson
3. "Karl Marx was right, socialism works, it is just that he had the wrong species" ~ Edward O. Wilson
4. "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" ~ Edward O. Wilson
5. "True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others." ~ Edward O. Wilson
6. "Still, if history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure." ~ Edward O. Wilson
7. "The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science." ~ Edward O. Wilson
8. "Human nature is deeper and broader than the artificial contrivance of any existing culture." ~ Edward O. Wilson
9. "Humanity is part of nature, a species that evolved among other species. 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." ~ Edward O. Wilson
10. "Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong." ~ Edward O. Wilson
11. "It often occurs to me that if, against all odds, there is a judgmental God and heaven, it will come to pass that when the pearly gates open, those who had the valor to think for themselves will be escorted to the head of the line, garlanded, and given their own personal audience." ~ Edward O. Wilson
12. "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
13. "The race is now on between the technoscientific and scientific forces that are destroying the living environment and those that can be harnessed to save it. . . . If the race is won, humanity can emerge in far better condition than when it entered, and with most of the diversity of life still intact." ~ Edward O. Wilson
14. "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." ~ Edward O. Wilson
15. "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)" ~ Edward O. Wilson
16. "Humanity is a biological species, living in a biological environment, because like all species, we are exquisitely adapted in everything: from our behavior, to our genetics, to our physiology, to that particular environment in which we live. The earth is our home. Unless we preserve the rest of life, as a sacred duty, we will be endangering ourselves by destroying the home in which we evolved, and on which we completely depend." ~ Edward O. Wilson
17. "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
18. "Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings." ~ Edward O. Wilson
19. "The creation myth is a Darwinian device for survival." ~ Edward O. Wilson
20. "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
21. "Overall, it seems now possible to draw a reasonably good explanation of why the human condition is a singularity, why the likes of it has occurred only once and took so long in coming. The reason is simply the extreme improbability of the preadaptations necessary for it to occur at all. Each of the evolutionary steps has been a full-blown adaptation in its own right. Each has required a particular sequence of one or more preadaptations that occurred previously. Homo sapiens is the only species of large mammal – thus large enough to evolve a human-sized brain – to have made every one of the required lucky turns in the evolutionary maze. (45)" ~ Edward O. Wilson
22. "Jungles and grasslands are the logical destinations, and towns and farmland the labyrinths that people have imposed between them sometime in the past. I cherish the green enclaves accidentally left behind." ~ Edward O. Wilson
23. "I will be brief. Not nearly so brief as Salvador Dalí, who gave the world's shortest speech. He said, 'I will be so brief I am already finished' and sat down." ~ Edward O. Wilson
24. "This is the assembly of life that took a billion years to evolve. It has eaten the storms-folded them into its genes-and created the world that created us. It holds the world steady." ~ Edward O. Wilson
25. "A society that condemns homosexuality harms itself. (254)" ~ Edward O. Wilson
26. "Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life." ~ Edward O. Wilson
27. "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
28. "People would rather believe than know." ~ Edward O. Wilson

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Edward O. Wilson Quotes
Edward O. Wilson Quotes
Edward O. Wilson Quotes

Today's Quote

Well, very splendid and very frightening. But splendid things are often frightening. Sometimes, it's the fright that makes them splendid at all."
Author: Catherynne M. Valente

What Did Edward O. Wilson Talk About?

Hum
Con
Per
Wit
Act
Ten
Humanity
Ear
End
Lit
Ally
Ring
Species
Die
Mental
Ours
Use
Win
Sit
Rest
Read
Son
Early
Tan
Thin
Wing
Rain
Between
Pen
Able
Evolved
Exist
Far
Hen
Deep
Land
Living
Los
Cause
Mind
Once
Ourselves
Self

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