Without a trace of irony I can say I have been blessed with brilliant enemies. I owe them a great debt, because they redoubled my energies and drove me in new directions.

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.

Ants make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects. There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost nothing about them.

Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.

The historical circumstance of interest is that the tropical rain forests have persisted over broad parts of the continents since their origins as stronghold of the flowering plants 150 million years ago.

What we need is an electronic encyclopedia of life, with one page for each species. On each page is given everything known about that species.

People respect nonfiction but they read novels.