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Two types of choices seem to ...

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 102 quotes

Put another way, the chimpanz...

Put another way, the chimpanzees' closest relative is not the gorilla but humans.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

With the rise of chiefdoms ar...

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.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

In contrast [to trees and fis...

In contrast [to trees and fish], oil, metals, and coal are not renewable; they don't reproduce, sprout, or have sex to produce baby oil droplets or coal nuggets.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

The metaphor is so obvious. E...

The metaphor is so obvious. Easter Island isolated in the Pacific Ocean — once the island got into trouble, there was no way they could get free. There was no other people from whom they could get help. In the same way that we on Planet Earth, if we ruin our own [world], we won't be able to get help.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

The past was still a Golden A...

The past was still a Golden Age, of ignorance, while the present is an Iron Age of willful bliss.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

When you have seen the errors...

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 102 quotes

It invites a search for ultim...

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 102 quotes

Livestock adopted in Africa w...

Livestock adopted in Africa were Eurasian species that came in from the north. Africa's long axis, like that of the Americas, is north/south rather than east/west. Those Eurasian domestic mammals spread southward very slowly in Africa, because they had to adapt to different climate zones and different animal diseases.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

Why is it that you white peop...

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 102 quotes

Eurasia's main axis is east/w...

Eurasia's main axis is east/west, whereas the main axis of the Americas is north/south. Eurasia's east/west axis meant that species domesticated in one part of Eurasia could easily spread thousands of miles at the same latitude, encountering the same day-length and climate to which they were already adapted.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

In fact, everywhere in the wo...

In fact, everywhere in the world there has been a flux between big and small societies. Big political units are constantly being formed, later to fragment. The individual pieces try to pull apart, and then they join together again. One sees that in Europe: There have been unifications and then dissolutions and reunifications. So in the long run, it's 10,000 steps toward amalgamation offsetting 9,999 steps toward falling apart again. In businesses and industries, I would guess that's also true.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

We know from our recent histo...

We know from our recent history that English did not come to replace U.S. Indian languages merely because English sounded musical to Indians' ears. Instead, the replacement entailed English-speaking immigrants' killing most Indians by war, murder, and introduced diseases, and the surviving Indians' being pressured into adopting English, the new majority language.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

All recognized famous invento...

All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

To dismiss the current extinc...

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 102 quotes

To science we owe dramatic ch...

To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our Earth is not the center of the universe, but merely one of nine planets circling one of billions of stars. From biology we learned that humans were not specially created by God but evolved along with tens of millions of other species.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

Think of all the human suffer...

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 102 quotes

History as well as life itsel...

History as well as life itself is complicated -- neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

But this was the only way of ...

But this was the only way of life that humans knew for their first 6m years on the planet. In giving it up over the past few thousand years, we have lost our vulnerability to disease and cold and wild animals, but we have also lost good ways to bring up children, look after old people, stave off diabetes and heart disease and understand the real dangers of everyday life.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

The survival rate of Dr Burto...

The survival rate of Dr Burton's patients approximately doubled the maximum survival rate of conventionally treated patients. Had these findings pertained to a chemotherapy drug instead of IAT, massive amounts of funding would have been allocated to investigate the drug. Once again, the politics of cancer barred a potentially valuable treatment from reaching the public.

Jared Diamond 102 quotes

Добрые, щедрые, великодушные: 6 советских актеров, которые были всеобщими любимчиками

23

Советских актёров часто ставят в пример как образец духовной силы, национальной гордости и внутренней красоты. Они стали символами эпохи, носителями культуры и нравственности. Но, как известно, за кул...

Десять кинозвезд, которые отлично поют

83

Актеры — люди творческие, но кто бы мог подумать, что некоторые из них скрывают прекрасный голос. В эпоху раннего Голливуда актеров с музыкальными способностями было немало — это считалось скорее норм...

Мэрилин Монро, Ким Кардашьян и другие

115

Неузнаваемая Ким Кардашьян в объективе фотографа Маркуса Клинко, 2009 год. Памела Андерсон в самой первой съёмке для журнала «Playboy», 1990. На фото голливудская актриса Dorothy Lamour и шимпанзе Джи...

Что стало с детьми-звездами: Рэдклифф и компания спустя годы

219

Расскажем, как сложилась судьба актеров, которые начинали сниматься еще в детстве.
Остаться на вершине в Голливуде удаётся не каждому, особенно если путь начался в детстве. Одни актёры теряются из-за...

Жизнь за границей: как изменились судьбы 7 уехавших телеведущих

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Два года назад отечественное телевидение столкнулось с беспрецедентной кадровой тектоникой — целая группа ярких и узнаваемых ведущих стремительно исчезла с экранов федеральных каналов. Эти лица долгие...

Кира Найтли, Деми Мур и другие

165

Кира Найтли на страницах журнала к выходу фильма «Пиджак», 2005. Следы динозавра, раскопанные в русле реки Палакси. Техас. США. 1952г. Самая большая женщина рядом с самым маленьким мужчиной, 1922 год....