E. O. Wilson Quotes

If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.

If you look at the history of big obstacles in understanding our world, there's usually an intuitive assumption underlying them that's wrong.

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.

There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.

There is no more dangerous error than that of mistaking the effect for the cause.

A misconception remains a misconception, even when it is shared by the majority of people.

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.

Hitchcock loves to be misunderstood, because he has based his whole life around misunderstandings.

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

It ain't ignorance that causes all the trouble in this world. It's the things people know that ain't so.

If I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said.

They would hear 3000 and think it was the year 3000, I was hoping it would sort of disorient them and prepare them for the strange message they were about to receive.

Error is always more busy than truth.

I never said I wasn't going to play any more. I don't know where that came from.

In art, scandal is a false narrative, a smoke screen that camouflages rather than reveals. When we don't know what we're seeing, we overreact.

If you are sure you understand everything that is going on, you are hopelessly confused.

Where are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

Any order that can be misunderstood, will be misunderstood

People think my name is Morpheus. Many times, people will say to me, 'Morpheus!' and I will complete the sentence by saying, 'is not my name!'

Perception's not reality.

Often when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite another.

People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment.

It's not what we don't know that hurts us, people say. It's what we believe is true that isn't that does the damage.

Stupidity is active in every direction, and can dress up in all the clothes of truth. Truth, on the other hand, has for every occasion only one dress and one path, and is always at a disadvantage.