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"I've worked very hard in this book to keep the lines of communication open. I don't want to turn someone away from this information for partisan political reasons."
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"Everybody talks, but there is no conversation."

"Words, they say, are the food of minds. But, like other foods, they can do little by themselves."

"The chief deficiency I see in the skeptical movement is its polarization: Us vs. Them - the sense that we have a monopoly on the truth; that those other people who believe in all these stupid doctrines are morons; that if you're sensible, you'll listen to us; and if not, to hell with you. This is nonconstructive. It does not get our message across. It condemns us to permanent minority status."

"The longer a person's twitter @username is, the harder it is to argue with them - on twitter."

"If one is talking about a vile thing it is better to talk of it in coarse language, one is less likely to be seduced into excusing it."

"If you want to appear more confident-speak slowly, articulately, clearly, and deliberately. Communicating with clarity will not only help you build more confidence in yourself, but it will inspire respect from others."

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

"I'll tell you a piece of news - I hope you have not heard it before: for good, bad, or indifferent, one always likes to be the first to tell."

"All the good stuff has already been said by someone somewhere at some point in time. You just have to find it. Today, communication pretty much comes down to understanding - saying what you have to say clearly and effectively...and then living it."

"Be careful what you say and do around a writer, your words and actions may become material."
Explore more quotes by Jared Diamond

"Twenty years ago, you might have been pessimistic and said there's no hope. But these days, some of our very biggest companies are acting remarkably cleanly. And in some cases, although not all cases, the CEOs are the driving forces behind that."

"Eurasia ended up with the most domesticated animal species in part because it's the world's largest land mass and offered the most wild species to begin with."

"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."

"Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species fulfilling all those criteria and worth domesticating, with the result that there have been no valuable additions of domestic animals in recent times, despite the efforts of modern science."

"Starbucks goes to a great effort, and pays twice as much for its coffee as its competitors do, and is very careful to help coffee producers in developing countries grow coffee without pesticides and in ways that preserve forest structure."

"Although native Africans domesticated some plants in the Sahel and in Ethiopia and in tropical West Africa, they acquired valuable domestic animals only later, from the north."

"It's striking that Native Americans evolved no devastating epidemic diseases to give to Europeans, in return for the many devastating epidemic diseases that Indians received from the Old World."

"I decided that now is the time to start doing the things that really interest me and I find important. It was in the 10 years of the MacArthur grant that I began working on my first book... and I began putting more work into environmental history."

"We can't manipulate some stars while maintaining other stars as controls; we can't start and stop ice ages, and we can't experiment with designing and evolving dinosaurs."

"The southward advance of native African farmers with Central African crops halted in Natal, beyond which Central African crops couldn't grow - with enormous consequences for the recent history of South Africa."
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