E. O. Wilson Quotes

The human animal has evolved as a preeminently social animal.

Humans are humans because we are able to communicate with each other and to organize to do things together that we can't do individually.

Many species reciprocate, but only humans gossip, and much of what we gossip about is the vale of other people as partners for reciprocal relationships.

Human beings are social animals; we devote a significant portion of our brain just to dealing with interactions with other humans.

Human beings are social creatures - not occasionally or by accident but always. Sociability is one of our lives as both cause and effect.

In principle, every social situation involves strategic interaction among the participants.

Mankind have always wandered or settled, agreed, or quarreled in troops and companies.

All animals communicate. What's special about gossip is that it's not about the here and now. You don't gossip about lions. You don't gossip about clouds. You only gossip about other people. And once you do, you can keep track of many more people - this is the basis for forming larger communities.

Man is a social animal formed to please in society.

Human beings are a social species. We like to hang together in groups, just like wildebeests, just like lions. Wildebeests don't hang with lions because lions eat wildebeests. Human beings are like that. We do what that group does that we're trying to identify with.

Man is by nature a political animal.

I thought if I could understand why apes get mean and horrible and aggressive when they grow up, maybe I could understand why people get mean and horrible and aggressive and have wars.

I'm curious about people. That's what I've always done since I've been a small boy. I'm curious about others.

I think what makes us human - is our interconnectedness among people. It's our ability to form and maintain relationships. It's the barometer by which we call ourselves human.

We humans are really good at forming groups to compete, and then dissolving the groups and reforming them along different lines to compete in a different way.

Elephants are contagious.

Men tend to be hierarchical, but women are driven to make lateral connections so they can cooperate.

It's weird... people say they're not like apes. Now how do you explain football then?

We're social animals. We've got to get along together. It's in our nature. We're hardwired that way.

A lion is not a lion is not a lion. As individuals, as mates, as members of a society, they're all very different.

I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.

We cannot understand our humanity just by studying individuals.

Human beings are born solitary, but everywhere they are in chains - daisy chains - of interactivity. Social actions are makeshift forms, often courageous, sometimes ridiculous, always strange. And in a way, every social action is a negotiation, a compromise between 'his,' 'her' or 'their' wish and yours.

Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.

I was a senior in high school when I decided I wanted to work on ants as a career. I just fell in love with them, and have never regretted it.