Edward O. Wilson Quotes

Because it is... far slower than Lamarckian evolution, biological evolution is always quickly outrun by cultural change.

The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured- especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised.

If we were to vanish today, the land environment would return to the fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion. Only a dozen or so species, among which are the crab louse and a mite that lives in the oil glands of our foreheads, depend on us entirely. But if ants were to disappear, tens of thousands of other plant and animal species would perish also, simplifying and weakening land ecosystems almost everywhere.

Nothing fundamental separates the course of human history from the course of physical history.

We seem to be able to be fully comfortable only when the remainder of humanity can be labeled as members versus nonmembers.

If we choose the path of destruction, the planet will continue to descend irreversibly into the Anthropocene Epoch, the biologically final age in which the planet exists almost exclusively by, for, and of ourselves.

Self-knowledge will reveal the elements of biological human nature from which modern social life proliferated in all its strange forms.

Daily life is a compromised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes. ...Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism, and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence.

The selection pressures of hunter-gatherer existence have persisted for over 99 percent of human evolution.

The most peaceable tribes of today were often ravagers of yesteryear and will probably again produce soldiers and murderers in the future.

The worst thing that can happen during the 1980s is not energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly that our descendents are least likely to forgive us.

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, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

The borderline between normal and schizophrenic people is broad and nearly imperceptible.

Evidence has... been adduced that schizophrenia is widespread in other kinds of human societies. ...and they form a substantial fraction of the clientele of the tribal shamans and healers.

Nationalism and racism, to take two examples, are the culturally nurtured outgrowths of simple tribalism.