True character arises from a deeper well than religion.
To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong.
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.
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.
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.
The two major challenges for the 21st century are to improve the economic situation of the majority and save as much of the planet as we can.
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.
In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems.
The education of women is the best way to save the environment.
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.
One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.
It’s the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer.
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.
Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety.
All three of the Abrahamic religions were born and nurtured in arid, disturbed environments.
It’s always been a great survival value for people to believe they belong to a superior tribe. That’s just in human relationships.
An Armageddon is approaching at the beginning of the third millennium. But it is not the cosmic war and fiery collapse of mankind foretold in sacred scripture. It is the wreckage of the planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity.
In the early stages of creation of both art and science, everything in the mind is a story.
We use pandas and eagles and things. I’d love to see a wilderness society with an angry-looking wolverine as their logo.
Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do.