Upheaval Quotes

“Rigidity or inflexibility can be the result of a previous history of abuse or trauma, or of an upbringing that offered a child no permission to experiment or to deviate from the family norms. Flexibility can come from the freedom of having been allowed to make one’s own choices as one was growing up.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“Those who study just one country end up
understanding no country.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“Finland’s crisis (Chapter 2) exploded with the Soviet Union’s massive attack upon Finland on November 30, 1939. In the resulting Winter War, Finland was virtually abandoned by all of its potential allies and sustained heavy losses, but nevertheless succeeded in preserving its independence against the Soviet Union, whose population outnumbered Finland’s by 40 to 1. I spent a summer in Finland 20 years later, hosted by veterans and widows and orphans of the Winter War. The war’s legacy was conspicuous selective change that made Finland an unprecedented mosaic, a mixture of contrasting elements: an affluent small liberal democracy, pursuing a foreign policy of doing everything possible to earn the trust of the impoverished giant reactionary Soviet dictatorship. That policy was considered shameful and denounced as “Finlandization” by many non-Finns who failed to understand the historical reasons for its adoption. One of the most intense moments of my summer in Finland unfolded when I ignorantly expressed similar views to a Winter War veteran, who replied by politely explaining to me the bitter lessons that Finns had learned from being denied help by other nations.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change

“It’s neither possible nor desirable for individuals or nations to change completely, and to discard everything of their former identities. The challenge, for nations as for individuals in crisis, is to figure out which parts of their identities are already functioning well and don’t need changing, and which parts are no longer working and do need changing.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“success is not guaranteed to well-intentioned decent people, nor necessarily denied to evil people.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” Winston Churchill’s corresponding quip was “Never let a good crisis go to waste!” A”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“Nations and individuals accept national and individual responsibility to take action to solve the problem, or else deny responsibility by self-pity, blaming others, and assuming the role of victim.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“The first, and also in my opinion the most ominous, of the fundamental problems now threatening American democracy is our accelerating deterioration of political compromise. As I previously”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“Individuals in crisis often receive help from friends, just as nations in crisis may recruit help from allied nations. Individuals in crisis may model their solutions on ways in which they see other individuals addressing similar crises; nations in crisis may borrow and adapt solutions already devised by other nations facing similar problems. Individuals in crisis may derive self-confidence from having survived previous crises; so do nations.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“The slaughter at Gallipoli symbolized the national pride of Australians, now fighting for their British motherland as Australians, not as Victorians or Tasmanians or South Australians—and the emotional dedication with which Australians publicly identified themselves as loyal British subjects.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“write these pages, Japan and the U.S. are still practicing widespread selective denial of major problems. Japan currently acknowledges some problems (its large government debt and aging population), and incompletely acknowledges the issue of Japanese women’s role. But Japan still denies other problems: its lack of accepted alternatives to immigration for solving its demographic difficulties; the historical causes of Japan’s tense relations with China and Korea; and denial that Japan’s traditional policy of seeking to grab overseas natural resources rather than to help manage them sustainably is now outdated. The U.S., as I write, is still in widespread denial of our own major problems: political polarization, low voter turnout, obstacles to voter registration, inequality, limited socio-economic mobility, and decreasing government investment in public goods.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“niche information.” When I was a teenager, cable TV didn’t exist; the first TV program of any sort didn’t come to my city of Boston until 1948; and for years thereafter, we Americans got our news from just three big TV networks, three major weekly newsmagazines, and newspapers. Most Americans shared those same sources of information, none of which was clearly identified with conservative or liberal views, and none of which slanted its information heavily. Now, with the rise of cable TV, news websites, and Facebook, and with the decline of broad-market weekly print newsmagazines, Americans choose their source of information according to their pre-existing views.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“For example, the great Italian Jewish author Primo Levi, who did survive Auschwitz, said afterwards, “The experience of Auschwitz for me was such as to sweep away whatever legacies of my religious education that I had retained. There is Auschwitz, therefore God cannot exist. I haven’t found a solution to that dilemma.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“Ego strength includes being able to tolerate strong emotions, to keep focused under stress, to express yourself freely, to perceive reality accurately, and to make sound decisions.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“All of these arenas of American life are facets of the same widely discussed phenomenon: the decline of what is termed “social capital.” As defined by political scientist Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone, “… social capital refers to connections among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. In that sense social capital is closely related to what some have called ‘civic virtue.’” It’s the trust, friendships, group affiliations, helping, and expectation of being helped built up by actively participating in and being a member of all sorts of groups, ranging from book clubs, bowling clubs, bridge clubs, church groups, community organizations, and parent-teacher associations to political organizations, professional societies, rotary clubs, town meetings, unions, veterans associations, and others.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“In the workplace, Japanese women have low participation and low pay. Participation declines steeply with increasing level of responsibility. Whereas women account for 49% of Japanese university students and 45% of entry-level job holders, they account for only 14% of university faculty positions (versus 33%–44% in the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany, and France), 11% of middle-level to senior management positions, 2% of positions on boards of directors, 1% of business executive committee members, and less than 1% of CEOs. At those higher levels Japan lags behind all major industrial countries except (again) South Korea.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“Finland is world-famous for its architects and decorators, who know how to produce beautiful effects in simple ways. On my first visit to Finland, I remember being invited into the living room of one of my host’s homes, and immediately thinking to myself, “This is the most beautiful room that I’ve ever seen!” On reflection, I then wondered why I found it so beautiful, because the room was a nearly-empty cubicle with just a few pieces of simple furniture. But the materials and form of the room, and those few pieces of furniture, were typically Finnish in their simplicity and beauty”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“Britain never regained its naval and economic dominance over the world, and it remains notoriously conflicted (“Brexit”) about its role in Europe. But Britain is still among the world’s six richest nations, is still a parliamentary democracy under a figurehead monarch, is still a world leader in science and technology, and still maintains as its currency the pound sterling rather than the euro”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“Yet we promise developing countries that, if they will only adopt good policies, like honest government and free market economies, they too can become like the First World today. That promise is utterly impossible, a cruel hoax. We are already having difficulty supporting a First World lifestyle even now, when only 1 billion people out of the world’s 7.5 billion people enjoy it.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“Great-Man” view of the British historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), who asserted that history is dominated by the deeds of great men, such as Oliver Cromwell and Frederick the Great.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“Consequences are that heavy TV viewers trust other people less, and join fewer voluntary organizations, than do people who are not heavy TV viewers. Before blaming TV-viewing for those behaviors, one might object: which is the cause and which is the result, or are the two sets of phenomena just correlated without either being the cause of the other?”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“One explanation that Putnam and many others have suggested for social capital’s decline in the U.S. is the rise in non-face-to-face communication at the expense of direct communication”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“Cet objectif a été atteint par une méthode occidentale : l’application d’une taxe foncière nationale de 3 %. Les agriculteurs japonais étaient mécontents et se sont révoltés périodiquement du fait qu’ils devaient payer comptant cette taxe chaque année, et ce, quel que soit le volume de la récolte. Mais s’ils avaient eu connaissance des taux d’imposition occidentaux modernes, ils auraient pu s’estimer heureux… Dans l’État où je vis, la Californie, par exemple, nous payons un impôt foncier de 1 %, plus un impôt d’État sur le revenu qui peut atteindre 12 %, plus un impôt national sur le revenu qui va chercher actuellement dans les 44 %.”
― Jared Diamond, Bouleversement: Les nations face aux crises et au changement

“Ainsi, l’Éducation nationale et l’abolition officielle des charges héréditaires ont contribué à saper les divisions traditionnelles de classe car, désormais, c’était l’enseignement supérieur et non la naissance qui opérait comme tremplin vers une haute fonction publique. Cela explique en partie pourquoi, parmi les quatorze grandes démocraties riches du monde d’aujourd’hui, le Japon est celle dont la répartition des richesses est la plus égalitaire, et celle qui compte le plus petit nombre de milliardaires parmi sa population ; les États-Unis se situent à l’extrême opposé dans les deux cas.”
― Jared Diamond, Bouleversement: Les nations face aux crises et au changement

“L’identité nationale regroupe pour ainsi dire les traits singuliers d’une langue, d’une culture et d’une histoire, de ces choses qui font la singularité d’une nation, qui contribuent à la fierté nationale, et que les citoyens d’une nation estiment avoir en commun.”
― Jared Diamond, Bouleversement: Les nations face aux crises et au changement

“Les nations et les individus acceptent qu’il leur incombe, en tant qu’individu ou nation, de prendre des mesures pour résoudre le problème, ou alors nient leur responsabilité en s’apitoyant sur leur sort, en blâmant les autres et en assumant le rôle de victime.”
― Jared Diamond, Bouleversement: Les nations face aux crises et au changement

“En l’espace de six semaines, soit nous commençons à examiner une nouvelle façon de faire face, soit nous revenons par défaut à nos vieilles habitudes mal adaptées.”
― Jared Diamond, Bouleversement: Les nations face aux crises et au changement

“Flexibility can come from the freedom of having been allowed to make one’s own choices as one was growing up.”
― Jared Diamond, Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

“En resumen, la fe que mantenemos los estadounidenses en la viabilidad de pasar de los harapos a la riqueza es un mito. Esa transición es menos factible en Estados Unidos que en otras grandes democracias.”
― Jared Diamond, Crisis: Cómo reaccionan los países en los momentos decisivos

“«Lo que cuenta en una democracia es la apariencia de democracia».”
― Jared Diamond, Crisis: Cómo reaccionan los países en los momentos decisivos