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

Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.

One thing I did was grow up as an ardent naturalist. I never grew out of my bug period.

Ants make up two-thirds of the biomass of all the insects. There are millions of species of organisms and we know almost nothing about them.

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 work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans.