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E. O. Wilson Quotes
1929–2021 United States
Edward Osborne Wilson (10 June 1929 – 26 December 2021) was an American entomologist and biologist known for his work on ecology, evolution, and sociobiology. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, Wilson is also known for his advocacy for environmentalism, and his secular-humanism ideas pertaining to religious and ethical matters.
United States Academics Autobiographers Biologists Critics Also known as: E O Wilson, Edward O. Wilson, Edward Osborne Wilson
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68 quotes
Well, let me tell you, ants are the dominant insects. They make up as much as a quarter of the biomass of all insects in the world. They are the principal predators. They're the cemetery workers.
The pattern of human population growth in the 20th century was more bacterial than primate. When Homo sapiens passed the six billion mark we had already exceeded by perhaps as much as 100 times the biomass of any large animal species that had ever existed on the land. We and the rest of life cannot afford another 100 years like that.
Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation. University of Georgia Press (2012)
The three extreme kinds of schizophrenia are unmistakable: the haunted paranoid surrounded by his imaginary community of spies and assassins, the clownish, sometimes incontinent hebephrenic, and the frozen catatonic.
On Human Nature (1978)
Are human beings innately aggressive? ...The answer to it is yes. ...Only by redefining the words "innateness" and "aggression" to the point of uselessness might we correctly say that human aggressiveness is not innate.
On Human Nature (1978)
The only other mammalian carnivores that take outsized prey are lions, hyenas, wolves, and African wild dogs. Each... has an exceptionally advanced social life, prominently featuring the pursuit of prey in coordinated packs.
On Human Nature (1978)
Because the brain can be guided by rational calculation only in a limited degree, it must fall back on the nuances of pleasure and pain mediated by the limbic system and other lower centers of the brain.
On Human Nature (1978)
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.
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)
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.
On Human Nature (1978)
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