Jared Diamond Quotes

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Animals Country Driving Earth Environment Evolution Giving

The metaphor is so obvious. Easter Island isolated in the Pacific Ocean — once the island got into trouble, there was no way they could get free. There was no other people from whom they could get help. In the same way that we on Planet Earth, if we ruin our own [world], we won't be able to get help.

Jared Diamond

Easter, Ocean, Islands

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A blueprint for disaster in any society is when the elite are capable of insulating themselves.

Jared Diamond

Disaster, Blueprints, Elites

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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.

Jared Diamond

Agriculture, Adoption, Way

"The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" by Jared Diamond, discovermagazine.com. May 01, 1999.

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History as well as life itself is complicated -- neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.

Jared Diamond

Simplicity, Consistency, Complicated

Jared Diamond (2011). “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition”, p.322, Penguin

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Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.

Jared Diamond

Trying, Population, Warfare

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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 today are problems entirely of our own making. And since we made the problems, we can also solve the problems.

Jared Diamond

Motivation, Inspiration, Today

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Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of the various societies' histories] towards success or failure: long-term planning and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives.

Jared Diamond

Reflection, Two, Long

"Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed". Book by Jared Diamond, 2005.

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Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home.

Jared Diamond

Home, Civilization, Conquest

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In much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. That's increasingly the case in Los Angeles where I come from. So that wealthy people in much of the world are insulated from the consequences of their actions.

Jared Diamond

People, Water, Community

"Why societies collapse". www.abc.net.au. July 17, 2003.

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History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves

Jared Diamond

Differences, History, Different

Jared Diamond (2017). “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, p.19, W. W. Norton & Company

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One person making a wrong decision affects the whole country.

Jared Diamond

Country, Decision, Wrong Decision

Source: www.strategy-business.com

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The history of interactions among disparate peoples is what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics and genocide. Those collisions created reverberations that have still not died down after many centuries, and that are actively continuing in some of the world's most troubled areas.

Jared Diamond

Epidemics, World, Modern

Jared Diamond (2017). “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, p.11, W. W. Norton & Company

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People often ask, "What is the single most important environmental population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!

Jared Diamond

Population Problem, People, Focus

Jared Diamond (2011). “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition”, p.457, Penguin

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With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them.

Jared Diamond

Years, People, Encounters

Jared Diamond (2017). “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, p.239, W. W. Norton & Company

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We're uncomfortable about considering history as a science. It's classified as a social science, which is considered not quite scientific.

Jared Diamond

Literature, Social, Uncomfortable

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Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.

Jared Diamond

Animal, Unique, Choices

"Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality". Book by Jared Diamond, 1997.

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Besides justifying the transfer of wealth to kleptocrats, institutionalized religion brings two other important benefits to centralized societies. First, shared ideology or religion helps solve the problem of how unrelated individuals are to live together without killing each other—by providing them with a bond not based on kinship. Second, it gives people a motive, other than genetic self-interest, for sacrificing their lives on behalf of others.

Jared Diamond

Sacrifice, Self, Two

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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 for other traits

Jared Diamond

Love, Beautiful, Sexy

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[W]hat makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy.

Jared Diamond

Crush, Religious, Patriotic

Jared Diamond (2017). “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, p.247, W. W. Norton & Company

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In contrast [to trees and fish], oil, metals, and coal are not renewable; they don't reproduce, sprout, or have sex to produce baby oil droplets or coal nuggets.

Jared Diamond

Baby, Sex, Oil

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Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.

Jared Diamond

Unique, Evolution, Biology

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[T]he values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs.

Jared Diamond

People, Triumph, Inappropriate

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

Jared Diamond

Independent, Innovation, Openness

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

Jared Diamond

Ignorance, Past, Iron

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

Jared Diamond

Conflict, Humans, Human History

Jared Diamond (2017). “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, p.78, W. W. Norton & Company

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Latest quotes from interviews

"In fact, everywhere in the world there has been a flux between big and small societies. Big political units are constantly being formed, later to fragment. The individual pieces try to pull apart, and then they join together again. One sees that in Europe: There have been unifications and then dissolutions and reunifications. So in the long run, it's 10,000 steps toward amalgamation offsetting 9,999 steps toward falling apart again. In businesses and industries, I would guess that's also true."

- Jared Diamond,

www.strategy-business.com, added Sep 1, 2017

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Jared Diamond

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Born: September 10, 1937
Occupation: Scientist
Cite this Page: Citation

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