Quotes by E. O. Wilson

"The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans."

"In my heart, I'm an Alabaman who went up north to work."

"I was a senior in high school when I decided I wanted to work on ants as a career. I just fell in love with them, and have never regretted it."

"The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?"

"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."

"Religious beliefs evolved by group-selection, tribe competing against tribe, and the illogic of religions is not a weakness but their essential strength."

"Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society."

"Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science."

"I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people, including fundamentalists, are quite intelligent, many of them are highly educated, and they should be treated with complete respect."

"People respect nonfiction but they read novels."

"The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion, whether it's Southern Baptist or Islam or any religion that believes in a supernatural supervalance over humanity."

"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."

"Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds... is not productive."

"True character arises from a deeper well than religion."

"Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals."

"Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction."

"But I feel music has a very important role in ritual activity, and that being able to join in musical activity, along with dancing, could have been necessary at a very early stage of human culture."

"So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world."

"I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn't intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife."

"If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth."