Jared Diamond Quotes

I already knew, from church, that this place was raped and pillaged by Spaniards and the Pilgrims. "Don't sit here and try to tell me that they broke bread together, brother.

Your new-caught, sullen peoples, / Half-devil and half child.

The loss of national identity is the greatest defeat a nation can know, and it is inevitable under the contemporary form of colonization.

Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?

The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.

Western civilisation came to this country in 1788 and I'm proud of that...

Never had there been such an attempt to make conquest the servant of civilization. About keeping India there is no question. England has a real duty there.

For cultural invasion to succeed, it is essential that those invaded become convinced of their intrinsic inferiority.

Part of the process of colonization (cultural conquest and domination) is the replacement of the celebrated drugs of the colonized with the celebrated drugs of the colonizer.

…if you suffer the Englishmen to dwell in your midst, their diseases and poisons shall destroy you utterly and you shall die.

Take up the White Man's burden— In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain, To seek another's profit And work another's gain. Take up the White Man's burden— The savage wars of peace— Fill All the mouth of Famine, And bid the sickness cease.

The mission of colonization cannot be other than a mission of high civilization.

Unlike more traditional conquerors, we are not content merely to subdue others: We insist that they be like us.

... there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them.

The Spaniardes have executed most outragious and more then Turkishe cruelties in all the west Indies

Only a few years after the permanent settlement of Virginia, some fifty missionaries arrived to begin the massive task of converting the heathen. The Indians on their part, did not respond with alacrity to the idea of adopting a culture that to them, in many cases, seemed barbarous, indeed.

So their Highnesses are kings and lords of these islands … by virtue of this donation: and some islands, and indeed almost all those to whom this has been notified, have received and served their Highnesses, as lords and kings, in the way that subjects ought to do, with good will, without any resistance, immediately, without delay, when they were informed of the aforesaid facts. And also they received and obeyed the priests whom their Highnesses sent to preach to them and to teach them our Holy Faith; and all these, of their own free will, without any reward or condition, have become Christians, and are so, and their Highnesses have joyfully and benignantly received them, and also have commanded them to be treated as their subjects and vassals; and you too are held and obliged to do the same. Wherefore, as best we can, we ask and require you that you consider what we have said to you, and that you take the time that shall be necessary to understand and deliberate upon it, and that you acknowledge the Church as the Ruler and Superior of the whole world, and the high priest called Pope, and in his name the King and Queen Doña Juana our lords, in his place, as superiors and lords and kings of these islands … and that you consent and give place that these religious fathers should declare and preach to you the aforesaid…. if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their Highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him; and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their Highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us..

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.

When someone tries to take over a country or a culture, they destroy the art.

The easiest way to subjugate a people is to erase a culture. I've seen it in war zones.

Shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest?

When white men first effect contact with some unspoilt race of savages, they offer them all kinds of benefits, from the light of the gospel to pumpkin pie. These, however, much as we may regret it, most savages receive with indifference. What they really value among the gifts that we bring to them is intoxicating liquor which enables them, for the first time in their lives, to have the illusion for a few brief moments that it is better to be alive than dead.

The status of 'native' is a nervous condition introduced and maintained by the settler among colonized people with their consent.

The history of interactions among disparate peoples is what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics and genocide. Those collisions created reverberations that have still not died down after many centuries, and that are actively continuing in some of the world's most troubled areas.

Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold or God. They collected souls as they collected jewels. They gathered mountains and valleys, rivers and whole horizons, the way a man might now gain tittle to building lots.