Paul Seabright > Quotes

“Homo sapiens sapiens, the shy, murderous ape, may be spreading pestilence and pollution on a global scale, but his violent instincts at least seem to have been triumphantly tamed.”
― Paul Seabright, The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life - Revised Edition

“The only way for natural selection to make human babies with larger skulls was to end gestation prematurely and allow them to be born in a state of dependence that no other animal (except marsupials) could possibly manage. So to the costs of feeding large-brained babies must be added the costs of protecting them, and protecting them requires sophisticated social arrangements.”
― Paul Seabright, The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present

“Homo sapiens sapiens, the shy, murderous ape,”
― Paul Seabright, The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life - Revised Edition

“taking care to make himself always indispensable in at least two places at once”
― Paul Seabright, The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life - Revised Edition