With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them.

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?

He could have watched her all night. He could watch her for an eternity and still never be able to capture the essence of what it is that makes ‘love’.

Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands.

Those against politics are in favor of the politics inflicted upon them.

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

Luck favors the people who are willing to grind it out.

I don't know about you, but rattlesnake sounds pretty damn good right now.

We should consider the histories of Christ three manner of ways; first, as a history of acts or legends; second, as a gift or a present; thirdly, as an example, which we should believe and follow.

Elegant revenge is great. The perfect revenge that lets people see who they actually are for a moment.

But this is a little different. This is the adult acting. This is a different crowd. It's more work and more good work. That's it. People will have their opinion regardless.

All is well ended if this suit be won. That you express content; which we will pay, With strife to please you, day exceeding day.