We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.

Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.

The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us.

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.

We should preserve every scrap of biodiversity as priceless while we learn to use it and come to understand what it means to humanity.

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.

The education of women is the best way to save the environment.

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.

If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.

It's obvious that the key problem facing humanity in the coming century is how to bring a better quality of life - for 8 billion or more people - without wrecking the environment entirely in the attempt.

Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.

Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.

Our brain is mapping the world. Often that map is distorted, but it's a map with constant immediate sensory input.

There is no better high than discovery.

If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.

It's like having astronomy without knowing where the stars are.

There doesn't seem to be any other way of creating the next green revolution without GMOs.

Every major religion today is a winner in the Darwinian struggle waged among cultures, and none ever flourished by tolerating its rivals.

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.

Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.

I'm very much a Christian in ideals and ethics, especially in terms of belief in fairness, a deep set obligation to others, and the virtues of charity, tolerance and generosity that we associate with traditional Christian teaching.

Well, let me tell you, ants are the dominant insects. They make up as much as a quarter of the biomass of all insects in the world. They are the principal predators. They're the cemetery workers.

The variety of genes on the planet in viruses exceeds, or is likely to exceed, that in all of the rest of life combined.

If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.

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

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

Every kid has a bug period... I never grew out of mine.

The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology.

We have decommissioned natural selection and must now look deep within ourselves and decide what we wish to become.

The human juggernaut is permanently eroding Earth's ancient biosphere.

Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong.

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

A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.

But once the ants and termites jumped the high barrier that prevents the vast variety of evolving animal groups from becoming fully social, they dominated the world.

What's been gratifying is to live long enough to see molecular biology and evolutionary biology growing toward each other and uniting in research efforts.

Companies that are willing to share, to withhold in order to further the growth of the company, willing to try to get a better atmosphere through a demonstration of democratic principles, fairness and cooperation, a better product, those will win in the end.

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?

Ideas emerge when a part of the real or imagined world is studied for its own sake.

It's always been a dream of mine, of exploring the living world, of classifying all the species and finding out what makes up the biosphere.

True character arises from a deeper well than religion.

The world depends on fungi, because they are major players in the cycling of materials and energy around the world.

I've found that good dialogue tells you not only what people are saying or how they're communicating but it tells you a great deal - by dialect and tone, content and circumstance - about the quality of the character.

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.

The ant world is a tumult, a noisy world of pheromones being passed back and forth.

I had in mind a message, although I hope it doesn't intrude too badly, persuading Americans, and especially Southerners, of the critical importance of land and our vanishing natural environment and wildlife.

Ants are the dominant insects of the world, and they've had a great impact on habitats almost all over the land surface of the world for more than 50-million years.

I was a senior in high school when I decided I wanted to work on ants as a career. I just fell in love with them, and have never regretted it.