What's been gratifying is to live long enough to see molecular biology and evolutionary biology growing toward each other and uniting in research efforts.
E. O. WilsonIn 2010, my two Harvard mathematician colleagues and I dismantled kin-selection theory, which was the reigning theory of the origin of altruism at the time.
E. O. WilsonWe ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It's about conflicts between creation stories.
E. O. WilsonAn individual ant, even though it has a brain about a millionth of a size of a human being's, can learn a maze; the kind we use is a simple rat maze in a laboratory. They can learn it about one-half as fast as a rat.
E. O. WilsonIf insemination were the sole biological function of sex, it could be achieved far more economically in a few seconds of mounting and insertion. Indeed, the least social of mammals mate with scarcely more ceremony. The species that have evolved long-term bonds are also, by and large, the ones that rely on elaborate courtship rituals. . . . Love and sex do indeed go together.
E. O. Wilson