The big question that scientists haven't even begun to get an answer for is how many species of microorganisms are there? Now, this is not stamp collecting. What we need is experts totally devoting their research to everything they can find out about every species, in a community of scientists who appreciate that every fact counts...everything new you learn about any species in any group is worth publishing somewhere.

The evolutionary epic is ... the best myth we will ever have.

Biology has finally opened up to achieve a unifying embrace of all its disciplines. We're seeing the renaissance of what could be called scientific natural history, which makes available the groundwork - the foundation work - of what is actually on the Earth.

The green prehuman earth is the mystery we were chosen to solve, a guide to the birthplace of our spirit, but it is slipping away. The way back seems harder every year. If there is danger in the human trajectory, it is not so much in the survival of our own species as in the fulfillment of the ultimate irony of organic evolution: that in the instant of achieving self-understanding, through the mind of man, life has doomed its most beautiful creations. And thus humanity closes the door on its past.

True character arises from a deeper well than religion.

I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution.

Ants are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them.