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Samuel Butler's famous aphorism that the chicken is only an egg's way of making another egg has been modernized: the organism is only DNA's way of making more DNA.

— E. O. Wilson Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975)

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Science

More quotes by E. O. Wilson

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another.

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)

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

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)

Much of good science — and perhaps all of great science — has its roots in fantasy.

Letters to a Young Scientist (2013)

To know how scientists engage in visual imagery is to understand how they think creatively.

Letters to a Young Scientist (2013)

The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper.

Letters to a Young Scientist (2013)

All E. O. Wilson quotes →

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Henri Poincaré Science and Hypothesis (1901)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: E. O. Wilson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.