To his US Olympic team - Every day you guys look worse and worse. And today you played like tomorrow.
The past was still a Golden Age, of ignorance, while the present is an Iron Age of willful bliss.
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.
History as well as life itself is complicated -- neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.
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.
Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.
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.
Both sides are divided and Western countries collaborate with Muslim countries and vice versa.
No man is born without ambitious worldly desires.
The good guys had to operate on a higher level than the killers--just for society to keep track of who was who.
Every time you play a hand differently from the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents' cards, they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it if you could see all their cards, they lose. Conversely, every time opponents play their hands differently from the way they would have if they could see all your cards, you gain; and every time they play their hands the same way they would have played if they could see all your cards, you lose.