E. O. Wilson: Because the living environment is what really sustains u...

A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.

E. O. Wilson

environmental growth choices

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.

E. O. Wilson

suicidal waiting people

It's always been a dream of mine, of exploring the living world, of classifying all the species and finding out what makes up the biosphere.

E. O. Wilson

biosphere dream 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.

E. O. Wilson

vanishing land mind

We use pandas and eagles and things. I'd love to see a wilderness society with an angry-looking wolverine as their logo.

E. O. Wilson

pandas eagles use

When you get into the whole field of exploring, probably 90 percent of the kinds of organisms, plants, animals and especially microorganisms and tiny invertebrate animals are unknown. Then you realize that we live on a relatively unexplored plan.

E. O. Wilson

tiny fields animal

The time has come to link ecology to economic and human development. When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all. What is happening to the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil will affect us all.

E. O. Wilson

rain science knowledge

Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind.

E. O. Wilson

theory-of-evolution religious views

If enough species are extinguished, will the ecosystems collapse, and will the extinction of most other species follow soon afterward? The only answer anyone can give is: possibly. By the time we find out, however, it might be too late. One planet, one experiment.

E. O. Wilson

ecosystems nature giving

A society that condemns homosexuality harms itself. (254)

E. O. Wilson

homosexuality harm

We've got paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technologies.

E. O. Wilson

medieval technology emotion

Known as the biosphere to scientists and as the creation to theologians, all of life together consists of a membrane around earth so thin that it cannot be seen edgewise from a satellite yet so prodigiously diverse that only a tiny fraction of species have been discovered and named.

E. O. Wilson

diversity discovery science

Human beings function better if they are deceived by their genes into thinking that there is a disinterested objective morality binding upon them, which all should obey.

E. O. Wilson

function morality thinking

Biology is a science of three dimensions. The first is the study of each species across all levels of biological organization, molecule to cell to organism to population to ecosystem. The second dimension is the diversity of all species in the biosphere. The third dimension is the history of each species in turn, comprising both its genetic evolution and the environmental change that drove the evolution. Biology, by growing in all three dimensions, is progressing toward unification and will continue to do so.

E. O. Wilson

ecosystems organization science

From the freedom to explore comes the joy of learning. From knowledge acquired by personal initiative arises the desire for more knowledge. And from mastery of the novel and beautiful world awaiting every child comes self-confidence.

E. O. Wilson

freedom beautiful children

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

E. O. Wilson

imagery scientist thinking

If insemination were the sole biological function of sex, it could be achieved far more economically in a few seconds of mounting and insertion. Indeed, the least social of mammals mate with scarcely more ceremony. The species that have evolved long-term bonds are also, by and large, the ones that rely on elaborate courtship rituals. . . . Love and sex do indeed go together.

E. O. Wilson

love long sex

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

different religious believe

One difference between ants and humans is that while ants send their old women off to war, humans send their young men.

E. O. Wilson

differences men war

We need freedom to roam across land owned by no one but protected by all, whose unchanging horizon is the same that bounded the world of our millennial ancestors.

E. O. Wilson

horizon land needs

Because the living environment is what really sustains us.