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

Jared Diamond

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Jared Diamond
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: September 10
Biologist
Ecologist
Geographer
Ornithologist
Physiologist
Scientist
University Teacher
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Jared Mason Diamond
Jared M. Diamond
Capacity
Among
Perhaps
Evolutionary
Greatest
Counter
Animal
Distinction
Choices
Animals
Make
Species
Unique

More quotes by Jared Diamond

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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 our own?
Jared Diamond
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Infectious diseases introduced with Europeans, like smallpox and measles, spread from one Indian tribe to another, far in advance of Europeans themselves, and killed an estimated 95% of the New World's Indian population.
Jared Diamond
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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
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Lest those islands still seem to you too remote in space and time to be relevant to our modern societies, just think about the risks... of our increasing globalization and increasing worldwide economic interdependence.
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In the latter case it is often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it.
Jared Diamond
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It invites a search for ultimate causes: why were Europeans, rather than Africans or Native Americans, the ones to end up with guns, the nastiest germs, and steel?
Jared Diamond
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Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species fulfilling all those criteria and worth domesticating, with the result that there have been no valuable additions of domestic animals in recent times, despite the efforts of modern science.
Jared Diamond
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The King's 28 letters have been described by scholars as the world's best alphabet and the most scientific system of writing.
Jared Diamond
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When you have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand the good that we have done you by coming to your land by order of his Majesty the King of Spain. Our Lord permitted that your pride should be brought low and that no Indian should be able to offend a Christian.
Jared Diamond
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Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.
Jared Diamond
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Measles and TB evolved from diseases of our cattle, influenza from a disease of pigs, and smallpox possibly from a disease of camels. The Americas had very few native domesticated animal species from which humans could acquire such diseases.
Jared Diamond
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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
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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
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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
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Even to this day, no native Australian animal species and only one plant species-the macadamia nut-have proved suitable for domestication. There still are no domestic kangaroos.
Jared Diamond
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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 murderers and rapists... to understand how those evil things came about.
Jared Diamond
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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
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The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!
Jared Diamond
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I decided that now is the time to start doing the things that really interest me and I find important. It was in the 10 years of the MacArthur grant that I began working on my first book... and I began putting more work into environmental history.
Jared Diamond
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Starbucks goes to a great effort, and pays twice as much for its coffee as its competitors do, and is very careful to help coffee producers in developing countries grow coffee without pesticides and in ways that preserve forest structure.
Jared Diamond