E. O. Wilson Quotes

The modesty of women, which, in its most primitive form among animals, is based on sexual periodicity, is, with that periodicity, an essential condition of courtship.

Every animal on the planet attracts mates with the goal of reproduction. Frogs swell their bodies. Male gorillas beat their chests. Have you ever watched a male lobster rise up on the tips of his legs and snap his claws, demanding female attention? Attraction is the first element of all animal reproduction, humans included

'Dating Game' wasn't social commentary, political analysis, Shakespearean-level drama or even blunt-force comedy. It was just the televised equivalent of meeting someone at a bar. But it appealed to our most basic Darwinian instinct: selecting a good mate. You can't go wrong when a show's premise is hard-wired into human DNA.

I think romantic love evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one individual at a time, thereby conserving mating time and energy.

This is courtship all the world over - the man all tongue; the woman all ears.

Courtship, properly understood, is the process whereby both the male and the female are brought into that state of sexual tumescence which is a more or less necessary condition for sexual intercourse. The play of courtship cannot, therefore, be considered to be definitely brought to an end by the ceremony of marriage; it may more properly be regarded as the natural preliminary to every act of coitus.

I’ve never heard that the sexual act requires any particular intelligence. From what I’ve observed, many stupid people are easily able to produce children.

Flirting is the first step in a long process of finding the right man or woman.

The natural world is full of females falling hard for stupid male display behavior, including bright feathers, big antlers, and bombastic courtship rituals.

For the butterfly, mating and propagation involve the sacrifice of life, for the human being, the sacrifice of beauty.

Sexual behavior in our species goes through three characteristic phases: pair formation, precopulatory activity, and copulation, usually but not always in that order. The pair-formation stage, usually referred to as courtship, is remarkably prolonged by animal standards.

Males transmit signals in courtship through behavioral displays.

Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.

Kissing is not just kissing. It is a major escalation or de-escalation point in a powerful process of mate choice.

Sex, a great and mysterious motive force in human life, has indisputably been a subject of absorbing interest to mankind through the ages.

Maybe our generation is more about sex, but it feels like romance is dying out.

Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round.

I don't want to see anyone leaving single tonight. I want everyone to leave impregnated.

Romantic love allows you to focus mating energy. Attachment sustains that relationship as long as necessary to raise your baby.

At 14 I discovered girls. At that time dancing was the only way you could put your arm around the girl. Dancing was courtship.

There is too little courtship in the world.

Evolution has programmed our brains to find two things particularly interesting, and therefore memorable: jokes and sex - and especially, it seems, jokes about sex.

I wonder if most people ever ask themselves why love is connected with reproduction. And if they do ask themselves about this, I wonder what answer they give.

The best men must cohabit with the best women.