Go as far as you can, [young scientists]. The world needs you badly.

The cutting of primeval forest and other disasters, fueled by the demands of growing human populations, are the overriding threat to biological diversity everywhere.

Evolution by natural selection is not an idle hypothesis. The genetic variation on which selection acts is well understood in principle all the way down to the molecular level.

I doubt that most people with short-term thinking love the natural world enough to save it.

By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.

So important are insects and other land-dwelling arthropods that if all were to disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a few months.

Nature first, then theory. Or, better, Nature and theory closely intertwined while you throw all your intellectual capital at the subject. Love the organisms for themselves first, then strain for general explanations, and, with good fortune, discoveries will follow. If they don't, the love and the pleasure will have been enough.