E. O. Wilson Quotes

Right now, we don't have a very good relation with creation.

Our relationship to the environment matters, our relationship to animals matters, and our relationship to culture matters.

The preservation of biodiversity is not just a job for governments. International and non-governmental organisations, the private sector and each and every individual have a role to play in changing entrenched outlooks and ending destructive patterns of behaviour

When we settled our country, the dark forest was considered in some ways evil and something that you needed to plow or, later, bulldoze. We now have a new understanding of the interconnectedness of ecosystems and the need for bird flyways and why all species matter.

That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics..

Nature is simply the environment on earth in which man finds himself, and to treat it as a separate being in the image of man is sheer nonsense.

If you want psychic gratification, one of the greatest ways is to know that you've made a real contribution to saving a species from blinking out during your lifetime.

Mississippians for the most part appreciate U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service management of our wildlife refuges and other natural resources.

We need a philosophy for humans and nature to live together.

I am glad that the life of pandas is so dull by human standards, for our efforts at conservation have little moral value if we preserve creatures only as human ornaments; I shall be impressed when we show solicitude for warty toads and slithering worms.

A world without leopards, well, who would want to live in it?

There are a great many people who are in favor of conservation no matter what it means.

Today, we must realize that nature is revealed in the simplest meadow, wood lot, marsh, stream, or tidepool, as well as in the remote grandeur of our parks and wilderness areas.

We have to create a sustainable environment, worldwide, and we're not doing it. The best thing we can do with the rest of this century is aggressively acquire - and put aside - the richest natural reserves that we can, and then do our best to manage the needs and desires of the 11 billion people we expect to have by the end of the century. This is where biology is headed. For that reason, the sooner we get on with mapping biodiversity on Earth, the better off biology will be - not to mention the whole subject of saving it before we carelessly throw it away.

I never lose an opportunity to speak about my obsession: humankind and the environment.

In places where this beauty has already disappeared, we will reconstruct it.

I realize the answer is not to create wilderness and walk away.

Your connections with other people are important, our connection to the earth.

Environmentalism is a way of seeing our place within the biosphere.

Species conversation is beyond a doubt an issue that truly matters to the American public.

My belief is that what comes across on the television is a capture of my enthusiasm and my passion for wildlife.

Biodiversity can't be maintained by protecting a few species in a zoo, or by preserving greenbelts or national parks. To function properly, nature needs more room than that. It can maintain itself, however, without human expense, without zookeepers, park rangers, foresters or gene banks. All it needs is to be left alone.

Nature conserves, prefers novelty.

It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing - rather than just one or two stars.

I'm very aware of modern countryside issues, such as rewilding: how, as science progresses, we begin to understand that a healthy ecosystem is multiform.