Quotes from Jared Diamond

If our ethical code makes a purely arbitrary distinction between humans and all other species, then we have a code based on naked selfishness devoid of any higher principle.

from our point of view, genital sores, diarrhea, and coughing are "symptoms of disease." From a germ's point of view, they're clever evolutionary strategies to broadcast the germ. That's why it's in the germ's interests to "make us sick." But why should a germ evolve the apparently self-defeating strategy of killing its host?

Recreational sex is thus supposed to function as the glue holding a human couple together while they cooperate in rearing their helpless baby.

The daddy-at-home theory posits that concealed ovulation evolved to promote monogamy, to force the man to stay home, and thus to bolster his certainty about his paternity of his wife's children. The many-fathers theory instead posits that concealed ovulation evolved to give the women access to many sex partners and thus to leave many men uncertain as to whether they sired her children.

One of the conclusions that we saw emerging from our discussion of Maya kings, Greenland Norse chieftains, and Easter Island chiefs is that, in the long run, rich people do not secure their own interests and those of their children if they rule over a collapsing society and merely buy themselves the privilege of being the last to starve or die.

Oral traditions of the islanders are obsessed with cannibalism; the most inflammatory taunt that could be snarled at an enemy was "The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth.

TODAY, PROFESSIONAL LINGUISTS design writing systems for unwritten languages by the method of blueprint copying.

For example, the great Italian Jewish author Primo Levi, who did survive Auschwitz, said afterwards, "The experience of Auschwitz for me was such as to sweep away whatever legacies of my religious education that I had retained. There is Auschwitz, therefore God cannot exist. I haven't found a solution to that dilemma.

breeds of dogs were developed and raised for food in Aztec Mexico, Polynesia, and ancient China.

Australia stands out from all the other continents: the differences between Eurasia, Africa, North America, and South America fade into insignificance compared with the differences between Australia and any of those other landmasses. Australia is by far the driest, smallest, flattest, most infertile, climatically most unpredictable, and biologically most impoverished continent.

If we find people virtuous or admirable in one respect, it troubles us to find them no so in another respect. It is difficult for us to acknowledge that people are not consistent, but are instead mosaics of traits formed by different sets of experiences that often do not correlate with each other.

the virus responsible for Korean hemorrhagic fever broadcasts itself in the urine of mice. For modification of a host's behavior, nothing matches rabies virus, which not only gets into the saliva of an infected dog but drives the dog into a frenzy of biting and thus infecting many new victims.

why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents? Those disparate rates constitute history's broadest pattern and my book's subject. While this book is thus ultimately

The greatest single epidemic in human history was the one of influenza that killed 21 million people at the end of the First World War.

Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed for us a stage where we made one of the most crucial decisions in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population growth or trying to increase food production, we opted for the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny. The same choice faces us today, with the difference that we now can learn from the past.

History is just one damn fact after another

In human societies possessing domestic animals, livestock fed more people in four distinct ways: by furnishing meat, milk, and fertilizer and by pulling plows.

When other entrepreneurs created jukeboxes by arranging for a phonograph to play popular music at the drop of a coin, Edison objected to this debasement, which apparently detracted from serious office use of his invention. Only after about 20 years did Edison reluctantly concede that the main use of his phonograph was to record and play music.

When we are in an unfamiliar situation, we fall back on drawing analogies with old familiar situations. That's a good way to proceed if the old and new situations are truly analogies, but it can be dangerous if they are only superficially similar.

But the line most familiar to European and American readers is the one that led via the Phoenicians to the Greeks by the early eighth century B.C., thence to the Etruscans in the same century, and in the next century to the Romans, whose alphabet with slight modifications is the one used to print this book.

New signs were created by combining old signs to produce new meanings: for example, the sign for head was combined with the sign for bread in order to produce a sign signifying eat.

Some of those solutions include halting population growth, limiting or eliminating nuclear weapons, developing peaceful means for solving international disputes, reducing our impact on the environment, and preserving species and natural habitats.

That envoy saw the Spaniards at their most disorganized, told Atahuallpa that they were not fighting men, and that he could tie them all up if given 200 Indians.

Information could be spread far more widely, more accurately, and in more detail by writing than it could be transmitted by mouth.