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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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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
Reason
Injustice
Mind
Minds
Rapists
Things
Study
Psychologists
Came
Injustices
Literature
Murderers
Evil
Psychologist
Understand
Genocide
History
Murderer

More quotes by Jared Diamond

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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
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The southward advance of native African farmers with Central African crops halted in Natal, beyond which Central African crops couldn't grow - with enormous consequences for the recent history of South Africa.
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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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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African cavalry mounted on rhinos or hippos would have made mincemeat of European cavalry mounted on horses. But it couldnt happen.
Jared Diamond
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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
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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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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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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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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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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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The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!
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
Jared Diamond
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To dismiss the current extinction wave on the grounds that extinctions are normal events is like ignoring a genocidal massacre on the grounds that every human is bound to die at some time anyway.
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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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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All human societies go through fads in which they temporarily either adopt practices of little use or else abandon practices of considerable use.
Jared Diamond
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Australia is the most isolated continent.
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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History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves
Jared Diamond