We use pandas and eagles and things. I'd love to see a wilderness society with an angry-looking wolverine as their logo.

One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.

It's always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That's just in human relationships.

Science and religion are the two most powerful forces in the world. Having them at odds... is not productive.

[The natural world cleans water, pollinates plants and provides pharmaceuticals, among many other gifts.] Thirty trillion dollars worth of services, scot-free to humanity, every year.

While ants exist in just the right numbers for the rest of the living world, humans have become too numerous. If we were to vanish today, the land environment would return to the fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion. Only a dozen or so species, among which are the crab louse and a mite that lives in the oil glands of our foreheads, depend on us entirely. But if ants were to disappear, tens of thousands of other plants and animal species would perish also, simplifying and weakening land ecosystems almost everywhere.

We are not afraid of predators, we're transfixed by them, prone to weave stories and fables and chatter endlessly about them, because fascination creates preparedness, and preparedness, survival. In a deeply tribal way, we love our monsters.