E. O. Wilson Quotes

It is a wonderful honor to receive the Audubon Medal from the National Audubon Society, which for more than a century has fought tirelessly to protect and preserve our natural resources and environment for future generations.

I don't think we're going to save anything if we go around talking about saving plants and animals only; we've got to translate that into what's in it for us.

In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.

The further human society drifts away from nature, the less we understand interdependence.

The images of Earth's delicate biosphere, contrasting with the sterile moonscape where the astronauts left their footsteps, have become iconic for environmentalists: these may indeed be the Apollo programme's most enduring legacy.

For me, the study of these laws is inseparable from a love of Nature in all its manifestations.

It's not that hard to imagine the natural world recovering it's health in our absence: it's more difficult, and more necessary, to imagine it recovering its health in our presence.

I want to interpret the natural world and our links to it. It's driven by the belief of many world-class scientists that we're in the midst of an extinction crisis... This time it's us that's doing it.

In parallel with the development of my interests in technical gadgetry I began to acquire a profound love of and respect for the natural world which motivates my scientific thinking to this day.

I'm very concerned for the future of the earth and its amazing creatures. We've got to be careful and make sure we don't foul our own nest.

Genetic design is something we can use to fight the lack of sustainability we humans are forcing on the earth's environment.

This Earth is our only home. Together, we must protect and cherish it.

I don't want to save a creek for the creek's sake, but what's in it for human beings.

The further we distance ourselves from the spell of the present, explored by our senses, the harder it will be to understand and protect nature's precarious balance, let alone the balance of our own human nature.

The natural world is the only one we have. To try to not see the natural world - to put on blinders and avoid seeing it - would for me seem like a form of madness. I'm also interested in the way landscape shapes individuals and populations, and from that, cultures.

Not all is doom and gloom. We are beginning to understand the natural world and are gaining a reverence for life - all life.

Sooner or later we've got to tie the saving of the natural world to our own public welfare.

Helping people understand the impact of key environmental and human issues worldwide is something that I'm passionate about. CNN's 'Going Green' series of specials are engaging viewers around the world through important messages of conservation and hope.

People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful and an amazement and a pleasure.

Unless action is taken soon - unless we can display the same vision of that earlier period - we will lose the treasure of California's open space and environmental beauty.

If children have an interest in nature, they will understand. I want them to become people who appreciate the consequences the next generation will suffer if we destroy our natural surroundings. So without a doubt, they need to learn that nature is vital to us by experiencing it. I want them to like nature and to climb mountains and so on.

As a kid, I was going to be a marine biologist or an actor. When I became successful as an actor, I said, 'Well, maybe I can lend a voice to this with an equal passion.' You realize how lucky we are and how destructive we've been and what little regard we have for the natural world.

I see a future in which nature gives us a helping hand. Instead of destroying the natural world, why can't we use it to solve the kinds of problems that we are facing?

'Being green' is commendable, but I hope that people don't take too much pride and self-adoration because they shut off the water when they brushed their teeth. The truth of the matter is, conservation alone will do little to save our planet.

Official education was telling people almost nothing of the nature of all those things on the seashores, and in the redwood forests, in the deserts and in the plains.