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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

True character arises from a deeper well than religion.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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