Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant … - Jared Diamond

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His fingers never ceased to amaze me. They could break a man's neck, bandage a wound, and slide sensually across bare skin.

Jared Diamond

Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers from crowd diseases.

Cities, City, Constant, Europe, Healthy, Self

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The metaphor is so obvious. Easter Island isolated in the Pacific Ocean — once the island got into trouble, there was no way they could get free. There was no other people from whom they could get help. In the same way that we on Planet Earth, if we ruin our own [world], we won't be able to get help.

Easter, Islands, Obvious, Ocean, Way

History as well as life itself is complicated -- neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.

Complicated, Consistency, Enterprise, History, Simplicity

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.

Adoption, Agriculture, Life, Recovered, Toward, Way

Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.

Food, Population, Production, Starvation, Trying, Warfare

Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of the various societies' histories] towards success or failure: long-term planning and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives.

Core, Long, Planning, Reflection, Role, Two