Jared Diamond: Quotes about people

“History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves”

Jared Diamond

Source: Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

People , History

“[.. ] the values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs.”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Cited by Tim Flannery, "Learning from the past to change our future" http://science.sciencemag.org/content/307/5706/45.full, Science, volume 307, 7 January 2005, page 45.
Source: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005)

People

“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 book Guns, Germs, and Steel

Source: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

People , History , Learning , Time

“My hope in writing this book has been that enough people will choose to profit from that opportunity to make a difference.”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Source: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Chapter "The world as a polder: what does it all mean to us today?", section "Reasons for hope" (Penguin Books, 2011, page 525, ISBN 978-0-241-95868-1.

People , Books , Hope

“If the Easter Islanders couldn't solve their milder local problems in the past, how can the modern world hope to solve its big global problems? People who get depressed at such thoughts often then ask me, “Jared, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the world’s future?” I answer, “I am a cautious optimist.” By that, I mean that, on the one hand, I acknowledge the seriousness of the problems facing us. If we don’t make a determined effort to solve them, and if we don’t succeed at that effort, the world as a whole within the next few decades will face a declining standard of living, or perhaps something worse. That’s the reason why I decided to devote most of my career efforts at this stage of my life to convincing people that our problems have to be taken seriously and won’t go away otherwise. On the other hand, we shall be able to solve our problems – if we choose to do so.”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Source: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Chapter "The world as a polder: what does it all mean to us today?", section "Reasons for hope" (Penguin Books, 2011, page 521, .

Life , People , World , Hope

“People often ask, "What is the single most important environmental/population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!"”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Page 498
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005)

People , World , Problem

“Perhaps we could benefit by selectively adopting some of those traditional practices. Some of us already do so, with demonstrated benefits to our health and happiness. In some respects we moderns are misfits; our bodies and our practices now face conditions different from those under which they evolved, and to which they became adapted. But we should also not go to the opposite extreme of romanticizing the past and longing for simpler times. Many traditional practices are ones that we can consider ourselves blessed to have discarded — such as infanticide, abandoning or killing elderly people, facing periodic risk of starvation, being at heightened risk from environmental dangers and infectious diseases, often seeing one’s children die, and living in constant fear of being attacked. Traditional societies may not only suggest to us some better living practices, but may also help us appreciate some advantages of our own society that we take for granted.”

Jared Diamond book The World Until Yesterday

Prologue, section "Why study traditional societies?"
The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? (2012)

Children , People , Health , Fear