Above all, it seems to me wrongheaded and dangerous to invoke historical assumptions about environmental practices of native peoples in order to justify treating them fairly. ... By invoking this assumption [i.e., that they were/are better environmental stewards than other peoples or parts of contemporary society] to justify fair treatment of native peoples, we imply that it would be OK to mistreat them if that assumption could be refuted. In fact, the case against mistreating them isn't based on any historical assumption about their environmental practices: it's based on a moral principle, namely, that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate or exterminate another people.

— Jared Diamond

Big-bang reproduction, or similarity: a single reproductive effort, followed by preprogrammed death.

— Jared Diamond

Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.

— Jared Diamond

But the largest number of primate species--thirty-four--have a promiscuous system in which females routinely associate and copulate with multiple males.

— Jared Diamond

Federal elections happen every two years in this country. Presidential elections every four years. And four years just aren't long enough to dismantle all the environmental laws we've got in this country.

— Jared Diamond

For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference.

— Jared Diamond

For any ranked society, whether a chiefdom or a state, one thus has to ask, why do the commoners tolerate the transfer of the fruits of their hard labor to kleptocracy? This question raised by political theorists from Plato to Marx are raised anew by voters in every modern election. Kleptocracies with little public support run the risk of being overthrown, either by downtrodden commoners, or by upstart would be replacement kleptocracy seeking public support by promising a higher ratio of services rendered to fruits stolen.

— Jared Diamond

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

— Jared Diamond

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.

— Jared Diamond

In much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. That's increasingly the case in Los Angeles where I come from. So that wealthy people in much of the world are insulated from the consequences of their act

— Jared Diamond