A blueprint for disaster in any society is when the elite are capable of insulating themselves.

History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves

One way to explain the complexity and unpredictability of historical systems, despite their ultimate determinacy, is to note that long chains of causation may separate final effects from ultimate causes lying outside the domain of that field of science.

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.

Why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents for the last 13,000 years?

The past was still a Golden Age, of ignorance, while the present is an Iron Age of willful bliss.

Ahead of me lies the familiar litany: weakening of the heart, hardening of the arteries, increasing brittleness of bones, decreases in kidney filtration rates, lower resistance of the immune system, and loss of memory. The list could be extended almost indefinitely. Evolution seems indeed to have arranged things so that all our systems deteriorate, and that we invest in repair only as much as we are worth.