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Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety.

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
Turn
Admiration
Virtue
Consistent
Belief
Obedience
Religious
Stands
Turns
Endure
Reinforced
Often
Atheism
Excites
Others
Authority
Enduring
Character
Source
Piety

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The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper
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Each species is a masterpiece, a creation assembled with extreme care and genius.
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Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?
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That's what the best global conservation organisations and the American government (and other environmentally inclined governments, such as Sweden and the Netherlands) are doing: protecting the remaining wild environment. This is the equivalent of getting a patient to the emergency room - keep them alive and then figure out how to save them.
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In my heart, I'm an Alabaman who went up north to work.
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It was inspiring to learn of the new Bachelor of Environmental Studies Program, and I congratulate you for it. Singapore is geographically in the right central position for an influence in Asia and Australia, and NUS has the reputation and academic strength to make it effective.
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The living environment is the biosphere, the thin layer around the world of living organisms. We're part of that. Our existence is dependent on it in ways that people haven't even begun to appreciate. Our existence depends not just on its existence, but its stability and its richness.
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Humanity needs a vision of an expanding and unending future.
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Genius is the summed production of the many with the names of the few attached for easy recall.
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In the early stages of creation of both art and science, everything in the mind is a story.
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The love of complexity without reductionism makes art the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.
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Consider the nematode roundworm, the most abundant of all animals. Four out of five animals on Earth are nematode worms — if all solid materials except nematode worms were to be eliminated, you could still see the ghostly outline of most of it in nematode worms.
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Mating Strategy is influenced by the cardinal fact that women have more at stake in sexual activity than men, because of the limited age span in which they can reproduce and the heavy investment required of them with each child conceived. In courtship women consistently emphasize commitment of resources and material security.
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If someone could actually prove scientifically that there is such a thing as a supernatural force, it would be one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science. So the notion that somehow scientists are resisting it is ludicrous.
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I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.
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One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.
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Without a trace of irony I can say I have been blessed with brilliant enemies. I owe them a great debt, because they redoubled my energies and drove me in new directions.
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The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions medieval institutions and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.
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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.
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It's always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That's just in human relationships.
E. O. Wilson