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I turned to the teeming small creatures that can be held between the thumb and forefinger: the little things that compose the foundation of our ecosystems, the little things, as I like to say, who run the world.

E. O. Wilson

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E. O. Wilson
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: June 10
Autobiographer
Biologist
Ecologist
Entomologist
Ethologist
Evolutionary Biologist
Myrmecologist
Naturalist
Novelist
Science Writer
Birmingham
Alabama
E. O. Wilson
Edward Osborne
EO Wilson
E O Wilson
Edward Osborne Wilson
Wilson
Edward Wilson
Junior
Foundation
Forefinger
World
Creatures
Teeming
Small
Thumb
Running
Compose
Littles
Ecosystems
Little
Thumbs
Held
Things
Turned
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More quotes by E. O. Wilson

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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.
E. O. Wilson
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The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.
E. O. Wilson
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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.
E. O. Wilson
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The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper
E. O. Wilson
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I see no way out of the problems that organized religion and tribalism create other than humans just becoming more honest and fully aware of themselves.
E. O. Wilson
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We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It's about conflicts between creation stories.
E. O. Wilson
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Sstudying ants just quickly became part of me because I was allowed to wander, explore and find things and figure things out myself. And I saw how much was there and what could be done and how I could make a life of it.
E. O. Wilson
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When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.
E. O. Wilson
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No species ... possesses a purpose beyond the imperatives created by genetic history ... The human mind is a device for survival and reproduction, and reason is just one of its various techniques.
E. O. Wilson
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The closer the genetic relationship of the family members, as for example father-to-son, as opposed to uncle-to-nephew, the higher the degree of cooperation.
E. O. Wilson
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Human nature is deeper and broader than the artificial contrivance of any existing culture.
E. O. Wilson
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In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.
E. O. Wilson
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Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength.
E. O. Wilson
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I believe that traditional religious belief and scientific knowledge depict the universe in radically different ways. At the bedrock they are incompatible and mutually exclusive.
E. O. Wilson
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Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year.
E. O. Wilson
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It may be argued that to know one kind of beetle is to know them all. But a species is not like a molecule in a cloud of molecules-it is a unique population.
E. O. Wilson
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In science, obsessiveness under psychological control can be a virtue.
E. O. Wilson
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If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.
E. O. Wilson
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If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving little or nothing for livestock, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable land (3.5 billion acres) would support about 10 billion people.
E. O. Wilson
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One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.
E. O. Wilson