E. O. Wilson Quotes

We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewildered, afraid of its own forces, in search not merely of its road but even of its direction. There are many voices of counsel, but few voices of vision; there is much excitement and feverish activity, but little concert of thoughtful purpose. We are distressed by our own ungoverned, undirected energies and do many things, but nothing long. It is our duty to find ourselves.

We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewildered, afraid of its own forces, in search not merely of its road but even of its direction

In the United States, man does not feel that he has been torn from the center of creation and suspended between hostile forces. He has built his own world, and it is built in his own image: it is his mirror. But now he cannot recognize himself in his inhuman objects, nor in his fellows.

Oh, God — the lives people try to lead. Oh, God — what a world they try to lead them in.

We've taken the world apart but we have no idea what to do with the pieces.

You can know the whole world and still feel lost in it.

Do you ever get moods when life seems absolutely meaningless? It's like a badly-constructed story, with all sorts of characters moving in and out who have nothing to do with the plot. And when somebody comes along that you think really has something to do with the plot, he suddenly drops out. After a while you begin to wonder what the story is about, and you feel that it's about nothing—just a jumble.

Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason.

Modern man has both feet firmly planted in mid-air

Modern life. Where are we running? Sometimes what we want is not always where we are... Are we alone? Is the real winter inside our hearts? We are all struggling for definition in a world that resists our increase.

My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.

That anyone should need to write a book advising people to "eat food" could be taken as a measure of our alienation and confusion. Or we can choose to see it in a more positive light and count ourselves fortunate indeed that there is once again real food for us to eat.

You get born and you try this and you don't know why, only you keep on trying it and you are born at the same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings, only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don't know why either except that the strings are all in one another's way.

The world is this incredibly blurry, crazy dream that I'm just sort of stumbling through.

What have you come to Earth for?' 'I'm having difficulties with a flower,' the little prince said. 'Ah!' said the snake. And they were both silent.

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?

Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused or disabused; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,- The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.

We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.

I never seem to know what's going on... Right from the very start, my life has been strange. I think I know what happened... I must have missed all the rehearsals.

What was once easy became confused and hard, which brings us back to the mystic question, who is God?

Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.

Lately, I feel like my life is a book written in a language I don't know how to read.

There is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him.

Life is just a plain bloody mess, that's all. And people are fools.