Jared Diamond Quotes

90 quotes in 1688 categories

• I've always been interested in a lot of things, and a lot of things at the same time, and I always tried to explain them…
• African cavalry mounted on rhinos or hippos would have made mincemeat of European cavalry mounted on horses. But it couldnt happen.
• Why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents for the last 13,000 years?
• With the MacArthur grant, I realized that people have high expectations of me, that they were placing me in this group of achievers. I compared…
• What did the last Easter Islander say as he chopped down the last tree? The Easter Islanders didnt have anthropologists.
• Why were there far more species of domesticated animals in Eurasia than in the Americas? The Americas harbor over a thousand native wild mammal species,…
• Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.
• But this was the only way of life that humans knew for their first 6m years on the planet. In giving it up over the…
• The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.
• Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of…
• Think of all the human suffering caused by the sad truth that beautiful sexy women or handsome Porsche-owning men often prove to have miserable genes…
• Throughout history, adultery has had few rivals as a cause of murder and human misery. The reason we tend to resemble our mates is that…
• 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 with designing and…
• I'd rather spend my leisure time doing what some people call my work and I call my fun.
• The survival rate of Dr Burton's patients approximately doubled the maximum survival rate of conventionally treated patients. Had these findings pertained to a chemotherapy drug…
• We scientists have fantasies of being uniquely qualified to make great discoveries. Alas, reality is cruel: most of us are replaceable. For the vast majority…
• Our biggest threat is not an asteroid about to crash into us, something we can do nothing about. Instead, all the major threats facing us…
• Technology causes problems as well as solves problems. Nobody has figured out a way to ensure that, as of tomorrow, technology won't create problems. Technology…
• Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home.
• We study the injustices of history for the same reason that we study genocide, and for the same reason that psychologists study the minds of…

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