Ian Morris > Quotes

“History, n. An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.”
― Ian Matthew Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“It is not that there is no food,” one commissar insisted. “There is plenty of grain, but 90 percent of the people have ideological problems.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“Success creates new problems; solving them creates still newer problems. Life, as they say, is a vale of tears.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“We are not going to reduce energy capture unless catastrophe forces us to—which means that the only way to avoid running out of resources, poisoning the planet, or both, will be by tapping into renewable, clean power.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“around 11,000 BCE an elderly woman was buried at ‘Ain Mallaha with one hand resting on a puppy, both of them curled up as if asleep.”
― Ian Matthew Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“War, I will suggest, has not been a friend to the undertaker. War is mass murder, and yet, in perhaps the greatest paradox in history, war has nevertheless been the undertaker’s worst enemy. Contrary to what the song says, war has been good for something: over the long run, it has made humanity safer and richer. War is hell, but—again, over the long run—the alternatives would have been worse.”
― Ian Morris, War: What is it good for?: The role of conflict in civilisation, from primates to robots

“Western civilization is essentially an amalgam of intellectual constructs which were designed to further the interests of their authors.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“All this comes under the heading of what the journalist Thomas L. Friedman has called “the really scary stuff we already know.” Much worse is what he calls “the even scarier stuff we don’t know.” The problem, Friedman explains, is that what we face is not global warming but “global weirding.” Climate change is nonlinear: everything is connected to everything else, feeding back in ways too bewilderingly complex to model. There will be tipping points when the environment shifts abruptly and irreversibly, but we don’t know where they are or what will happen when we reach them.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“By 1870, Britain’s steam engines generated 4 million horsepower, equivalent to the work of 40 million men, who—if industry had still depended on muscles—would have eaten more than three times Britain’s entire wheat output.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“Europe—at least when it came to gunnery—had more in common with southern than with northern China. It was full of forts, had plenty of broken landscapes that constrained armies’ movements, and, because it was so far from the steppes (which made cavalry expensive), its armies always included a lot of slow-moving infantry. In this environment, tinkering with guns to squeeze out small improvements made a great deal of sense, and by 1600 so many improvements had accumulated that European armies were becoming the best on earth.”
― Ian Morris, War: What is it good for?: The role of conflict in civilisation, from primates to robots

“Neither politicians nor statistics always lie; it is just that there is no such thing as a completely neutral way to present either policies or numbers. Every”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“We have been cursed to live in interesting times.”
― Ian Matthew Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“the Romans first neutralized Greek philosophy, then turned Christianity into a prop for their empire.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“A rather unpleasant genetic study has suggested that human body lice, which drink our blood and live in our clothes, evolved around fifty thousand years ago as a little bonus for the first fashionistas.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“Politicians and advertisers have turned misleading us with statistics into a fine art. Already”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“What all this adds up to is the conclusion that Western rule by 2000 was neither a long-term lock-in nor a short-term accident. It was more of a long-term probability. It”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“The hotbed of innovation was initially southern China, because the wars against the Mongol overlords of the mid-fourteenth-century Yangzi Valley would be won by storming fortresses and sinking big ships fighting in the constrained space of a river. For both these jobs, early guns were excellent. But when the fighting ended in 1368, the main theater of war shifted to the steppes in northern China. Here there were few forts to bombard, and slow-firing guns were useless against fast-moving cavalry. Chinese generals, being rational men, spent their money on extra horsemen and a great wall rather than incremental improvements in firearms.”
― Ian Morris, War: What is it good for?: The role of conflict in civilisation, from primates to robots

“Az uralkodó az államtól függ - írta a császár, Taj-Csung [626-642] -, és az állam a néptől függ. Ha elnyomjuk a népet, hogy így szolgálja az uralkodót, az olyan lenne, mintha valaki a saját húsából vágna egy darabot, hogy azzal töltse meg a saját gyomrát. A gyomrát ugyan megtölti, de a teste megsérül; az uralkodó vagyonos lesz ugyan, de az állam elpusztul”
― Ian Morris, War! What Is It Good For?: Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots

“China can fairly be said to have developed the most rational selection processes for state service known to history.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“Evolution selects for what we call common sense.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“Piracy paid: Drake’s backers realized a 4,700 percent return on their investment, and using just three-quarters of her share Queen Elizabeth cleared England’s entire foreign debt.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“Yet from almost the first moment factories filled England’s skies with smoke, European intellectuals realized that they had a problem. As problems went, it was not a bad one: they appeared to be taking over the world, but did not know why.”
― Ian Matthew Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“One grave of around 6000 BCE held an eight-hole flute, capable of playing any modern melody.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“A Nellis légitámaszponton hallottam egy viccet, amely szerint a jövőben a légierő mindössze egy emberből, egy kutyából és egy számítógépből áll majd. Az ember feladata lesz, hogy etesse a kutyát, a kutyáé pedig az, nehogy az ember hozzányúljon a számítógéphez.”
― Ian Morris, War! What Is It Good For?: Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots

“The great question for our times is not whether the West will continue to rule. It is whether humanity as a whole will break through to an entirely new kind of existence before disaster strikes us down—permanently.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“people invested an estimated 30 million hours of labor in the most enigmatic monument of all, Stonehenge. One”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“If there is any place for bungling idiots in this story, it surely belongs to Columbus, who opened the road to Tenochtitlán by massively underestimating the distance around the globe and refusing to believe that he had the numbers wrong. Conversely,”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“Many of us worry today about a growing gap between the great mass of mere mortals and an internationalised and (metaphorically) incestuous elite, flitting between the luxury hotels and Michelin-starred restaurants of London, New York and Singapore or gathering for closed-door festivals of self-congratulation in the picture-book-perfect Alpine resort of Davos.”
― Ian Morris, Geography Is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000-Year History

“And each [band of ancient humans] surely knew that their gods loved them, because they were, in spite of everything, still alive.”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

“History has not come to an end with Western rule. The”
― Ian Morris, Why the West Rules—for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future