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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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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
Years
Animal
Valuable
Criteria
Effort
Animals
Domestic
Possible
Result
Recent
Literature
Species
Fulfilling
Times
Large
Efforts
Additions
Science
Worth
Thousands
Mammal
Humans
Modern
Wild
Domesticated
Every
Results
Despite
Mammals

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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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One person making a wrong decision affects the whole country.
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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.
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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.
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In the latter case it is often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it.
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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.
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Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.
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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.
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Australia is the most isolated continent.
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The past was still a Golden Age, of ignorance, while the present is an Iron Age of willful bliss.
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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.
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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.
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