Jared Diamond

I've always been interested in a lot of things, and a lot of things at the same time, and I always tried…

— Jared Diamond

Human societies vary in lots of independent factors affecting their openness to innovation.

— Jared Diamond

I'd rather spend my leisure time doing what some people call my work and I call my fun.

— Jared Diamond

In the latter case it is often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it.

— Jared Diamond

Much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and the have-nots.

— Jared Diamond

“or just inventing a new letter (as our medieval ancestors did when they created the new letters j, u, and w).”

— Jared Diamond

All human societies go through fads in which they temporarily either adopt practices of little use or else abandon practices of considerable…

— Jared Diamond

The past was still a Golden Age, of ignorance, while the present is an Iron Age of willful bliss.

— Jared Diamond

We can't manipulate some stars while maintaining other stars as controls; we can't start and stop ice ages, and we can't experiment…

— Jared Diamond

“All human societies contain inventive people. It’s just that some environments provide more starting materials, and more favorable conditions for utilizing inventions,…

— Jared Diamond

The broadest pattern of history - namely, the differences between human societies on different continents - seems to me to be attributable…

— Jared Diamond

Federal elections happen every two years in this country. Presidential elections every four years. And four years just isn't long enough to…

— Jared Diamond

In much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. That's increasingly the case…

— Jared Diamond

“My two main conclusions are that technology develops cumulatively, rather than in isolated heroic acts, and that it finds most of its…

— Jared Diamond

Measles and TB evolved from diseases of our cattle, influenza from a disease of pigs, and smallpox possibly from a disease of…

— Jared Diamond

Even to this day, no native Australian animal species and only one plant species-the macadamia nut-have proved suitable for domestication. There still…

— Jared Diamond

“But the Semitic names did possess meaning in Semitic languages: they were the words for familiar objects (’aleph = ox, beth =…

— Jared Diamond

In fact, everywhere in the world there has been a flux between big and small societies. Big political units are constantly being…

— Jared Diamond

Ahead of me lies the familiar litany: weakening of the heart, hardening of the arteries, increasing brittleness of bones, decreases in kidney…

— Jared Diamond

“All of these parallels between Mesoamerican and ancient western Eurasian writing testify to the underlying universality of human creativity. While Sumerian and…

— Jared Diamond

Twelve thousand years ago, everybody on earth was a hunter-gatherer; now almost all of us are farmers or else are fed by…

— Jared Diamond

“Globalization makes it impossible for modern societies to collapse in isolation, as did Easter Island and the Greenland Norse in the past.…

— Jared Diamond

In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume.…

— Jared Diamond

We know from our recent history that English did not come to replace U.S. Indian languages merely because English sounded musical to…

— Jared Diamond

Eurasia ended up with the most domesticated animal species in part because it's the world's largest land mass and offered the most…

— Jared Diamond

The Anasazi did manage to construct in stone the largest and tallest buildings erected in North America until the Chicago steel girder…

— Jared Diamond

The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!

— Jared Diamond

In parts of Montana, salt concentrations in soil water, have reached those double those of seawater.

— Jared Diamond

All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using…

— Jared Diamond

“As a result of that confined distribution, peoples who pride themselves on being civilized have always viewed writing as the sharpest distinction…

— Jared Diamond

Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species fulfilling all those criteria and worth domesticating, with the result…

— Jared Diamond

Twenty years ago, you might have been pessimistic and said there's no hope. But these days, some of our very biggest companies…

— Jared Diamond

Lest those islands still seem to you too remote in space and time to be relevant to our modern societies, just think…

— Jared Diamond

“(On the beginning of the mid-1990s' genocidal war in Rwanda:) Within six weeks, an estimated 800,000 Tutsi, representing about three-quarters of the…

— Jared Diamond

For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful…

— Jared Diamond

“Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated…

— Jared Diamond

Infectious diseases introduced with Europeans, like smallpox and measles, spread from one Indian tribe to another, far in advance of Europeans themselves,…

— Jared Diamond

AIDS and malaria and TB are national security issues. A worldwide program to get a start on dealing with these issues would…

— Jared Diamond

“After the arrival of Europeans, the Big Island’s King Kamehameha I rapidly proceeded with the consolidation of the largest islands by purchasing…

— Jared Diamond

“Maritime technology coupled with political organization was similarly essential for European expansions to other continents, as well as for expansions of many…

— Jared Diamond