Jared Diamond quotes - page 3

Jared Diamond is an American scientist, geographer, and author, renowned for his interdisciplinary work. His most famous book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel," explores the factors that shaped human societies. He continues to influence discussions on history, evolution, and the environment. Here are 67 of his quotes:

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. (Jared Diamond)
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. View quote
Jared Diamond
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. View quote
Jared Diamond
Eurasia ended up with the most domesticated animal species in part because it's the world's largest land mass and offered the most wild species to begin with. View quote
Jared Diamond
The rate of human invention is faster, and the rate of cultural loss is slower, in areas occupied by many competing societies with many individuals and in contact with societies elsewhere. View quote
Jared Diamond
No government is here forever. And there are other forces - the most potent force in our society, in fact, big business - doing good for the environment. View quote
Jared Diamond
Twenty years ago, you might have been pessimistic and said there's no hope. But these days, some of our very biggest companies are acting remarkably cleanly. And in some cases, although not all cases, the CEOs are the driving forces behind that. View quote
Jared Diamond
Some people have much more pull than other people. But when I say that the public has ultimate responsibility, I'm not saying it in a moral sense. I'm just saying it in the sense of what is it that's really going to bring change. View quote
Jared Diamond
I'd rather spend my leisure time doing what some people call my work and I call my fun. View quote
Jared Diamond
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. View quote
Jared Diamond
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)
We can't manipulate some stars while maintaining other stars as controls; we can't start and stop ice ages, and we can't experiment with designing and evolving dinosaurs. View quote
Jared Diamond
It's striking that Native Americans evolved no devastating epidemic diseases to give to Europeans, in return for the many devastating epidemic diseases that Indians received from the Old World. View quote
Jared Diamond
Federal elections happen every two years in this country. Presidential elections every four years. And four years just isn't long enough to dismantle all the environmental laws we've got in this country. View quote
Jared Diamond
Take air quality in the United States today: It's about 30 percent better than it was 25 years ago, even though there are now more people driving more cars. View quote
Jared Diamond
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. View quote
Jared Diamond
The central principle of Fritz Bauer's career was that Germans should hold judgement upon themselves. That meant prosecuting ordinary Germans, not just the leaders whom the Allies had prosecuted. [...] The Nazi defendants being prosecuted by Bauer all tended to offer the same set of excuses [...]. Bauer's response, which he formulated again and again at the trials and in public, was as follows. Those Germans whom he was prosecuting were committing crimes against humanity. The laws of the Nazi state were illegitimate. One cannot defend one's actions by saying that one was obeying those laws. There is no law that can justify a crime against humanity. Everybody must have his own sense of right and wrong and must obey it, independently of what a state government says. Anyone who takes part in what Bauer called a murder machine [...] thereby becomes guilty of a crime. View quote
Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond - Image
Photo: Aude, CC BY-SA 2.5
Occupation: American Scientist
Born: September 10, 1937
Quotes count: 67
Wikipedia: Jared Diamond

Related authors

Steven Pinker - thumbnail
Steven Pinker  200 
Canadian-American Scientist
Ernst Mayr - thumbnail
Ernst Mayr  36 
German-American Scientist
Noam Chomsky - thumbnail
Noam Chomsky  618 
American Linguist
Niall Ferguson - thumbnail
Niall Ferguson  48 
British Historian
Richard Dawkins - thumbnail
Richard Dawkins  475 
English Scientist
E. O. Wilson - thumbnail
E. O. Wilson  171 
American Biologist
Jeffrey D. Sachs - thumbnail
Jeffrey D. Sachs  70 
American Economist
Stephen Jay Gould  319 
American Biologist
Sylvain Tesson  5 
Writer
Bill McKibben - thumbnail
Bill McKibben  27 
American Environmentalist