Recent discoveries about apes suggest, however, that a gorilla or common chimp stands at least as good a chance being murdered as the average human.

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?

There is something divine, mystical, magical and unexplainable in the universe that is listening and responding to each of us.

The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.

Let's leave it all alone. I'm stupidest when I try to be funny.

I think Joe [Madison] is right. What we have to do is call him out on every one of these things and then maybe somebody will take the sweet machine away from him.

A nation which thinks that it is belief in God and not good law which makes people honest does not seem to me very advanced.

I thought the Hall of Fame was for superstars, not just average players like me.

I had taken on the color of the climate around me and had driven back all the emotion that rose from the Brooklyn streets so that I could belong to the exclusive club of Congress.

You can be free from everything but the consequences of what you do.

YouTube is a new experience for me-someone threw a laptop in front of me and showed me Nic Cage going mad, which has got to be the funniest thing on YouTube. He's so courageous.

I have never intimidated the masses... I only intimidate corrupt officials.