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.

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.

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?

Much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and the have-nots.

Every word the right one and exactly where it should be. That's basically the highest compliment I can give.

No one person can possibly combine all the elements supposed to make up what everyone means by friendship.

If you're in California and it's raining, stay home, because nobody can drive in the rain. It's like it's raining frogs. They're terrified.

Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clamtrous lapwings feel the leaden death; Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare They fall, and leave their little lives in air.

If Donald Trump came to visit Britain I think he would unite us all against him.

A large country with such outstanding economic performance as Germany cannot forget that it owes some of its success to demand from other European countries.

My goal is to get everybody in America to do their family tree.

If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable... we must be content to creep along the ground, and never soar.

Humility is not a trait I often associate with America.

I wasn't a bad person who needed to become good...I was DEAD and needed to be brought to life! (Ephesians 2:1-10)