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

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

Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.

The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.

AIDS and malaria and TB are national security issues. A worldwide program to get a start on dealing with these issues would cost about $25 billion... It's, what, a few months in Iraq.

We're uncomfortable about considering history as a science. It's classified as a social science, which is considered not quite scientific.

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

Technology has to be invented or adopted.

Rhino-mounted Bantu shock troops could have overthrown the Roman Empire. It never happened.

Human societies vary in lots of independent factors affecting their openness to innovation.

Why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents for the last 13,000 years?

Many of those who are humiliated are not humble. Some react to humiliation with anger, others with patience, and others with freedom. The first are culpable, the next harmless, the last just.

May the mysteries that confound you, be unraveled.

Hema Malini and Nutan were my childhood crushes! I met Hemaji once when dad took me to the set of a film. Both these ladies stole my heart with their beauty and grace.

Breakups are a horrible thing for almost everybody I know. For someone who is a love addict, it's debilitating.

It's wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago.

You can write anytime people will leave you alone and not interrupt you.

It changed me more than anything else. You don't want to get to that place where you're the adult and you're palpably in the next generation. And, this shoved me into that.

The devil wants to convince you that dying is the worst thing. It is very much easier to do what god made you for than not.

Let's recognize that, the Houthi rebels in Yemen are fully subsidized by Iran.

I love my friends. They're my family.