[Bacteria are the] dark matter of the biological world [with 4 million mostly unknown species in a ton of soil].

Competing is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups of selfish individuals.

Known as the biosphere to scientists and as the creation to theologians, all of life together consists of a membrane around earth so thin that it cannot be seen edgewise from a satellite yet so prodigiously diverse that only a tiny fraction of species have been discovered and named.

In 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.

People would rather believe than know.

In my heart, I'm an Alabaman who went up north to work.

Sstudying ants just quickly became part of me because I was allowed to wander, explore and find things and figure things out myself. And I saw how much was there and what could be done and how I could make a life of it.