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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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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
People
Guinea
Developed
Brought
White
Black
Littles
Little
Much
Cargo

More quotes by 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?
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The United States has long thought of itself as the land of infinite plenty, and historically we did have abundant resources. But now we are gradually exhausting our fisheries, our topsoil, our water. On top of that, we're coming to the end of world resources.
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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.
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Technology has to be invented or adopted.
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Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.
Jared Diamond
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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, so you might initially suppose that the Americas offered plenty of starting material for domestication.
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I personally am not conscious of my accent.
Jared Diamond
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Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers from crowd diseases.
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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.
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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
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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 of scientific contributions, if scientist X hadn't achieved it that year, scientist Y would have achieved the same result or something very similar soon thereafter.
Jared Diamond
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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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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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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 to myself. I ask a lot of questions.
Jared Diamond
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Native Americans had only stone and wooden weapons and no animals that could be ridden. Those military advantages repeatedly enabled troops of a few dozen mounted Spaniards to defeat Indian armies numbering in the thousands.
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.
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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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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
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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
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African cavalry mounted on rhinos or hippos would have made mincemeat of European cavalry mounted on horses. But it couldnt happen.
Jared Diamond