The rate of human invention is faster, and the rate of cultural loss is slower, in areas occupied by many competing societies with many individuals and in contact with societies elsewhere.

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?

Walking on the path I met my Master, known by a million names in different cultures and places yet people have forgotten the way to HIM.

My life is my message.

For every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin. His enemies have only to find it.

My idea of superwoman is someone who scrubs her own floors.

Always define your area of excellence. Establish the area where you will be the best.

Every time a woman makes herself laugh at her husband's often-told jokes she betrays him. The man who looks at his woman and says 'What would I do without you?' is already destroyed.

All that money can do is buy us some one else's work in exchange for our own.

The most sensible skill that I can give to somebody born in 2003 is a perfect command of Mandarin.

People need each other and think it is love. There's no hanging on to, or fencing in, of the other one when one loves.

It's not what the price of gold is that matters, but rather how much stuff it will buy.