“The modern age has witnessed the rise of a number of new natural-law religions, such as liberalism, Communism, capitalism, nationalism and Nazism.… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The most important segments of many religious dogmas are not their ethical principles, but rather factual statements such as ‘God exists’, ‘the… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Yet in practice, science and religion are like a husband and wife who after 500 years of marriage counselling still don’t know… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark. In modern times, a small difference in skin colour, dialect or religion has been enough to… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“For thousands of years priests, rabbis and muftis explained that humans cannot overcome famine, plague and war by their own efforts. Then… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The first universal order to appear was economic: the monetary order. The second universal order was political: the imperial order. The third… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
Just as divine authority was legitimised by religious mythologies and human authority was legitimised by humanist ideologies, so high-tech gurus and Silicon… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Soviet Communism was a fanatical and missionary religion. A devout Communist could not be a Christian or a Buddhist, and was expected… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Whether or not Project Gilgamesh succeeds, from a historical perspective it is fascinating to see that most late-modern religions and ideologies have… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“...Money is also the apogee of human tolerance; money is more open-minded than language, state laws, culture codes, religious beliefs, and social… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Every religion, ideology and creed has its shadow, and no matter which creed you follow you should acknowledge your shadow and avoid… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The first monotheist religion known to us appeared in Egypt, c.1350 BC, when Pharaoh Akhenaten declared that one of the minor deities… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“From a historical perspective, the spiritual journey is always tragic, for it is a lonely path fit for individuals rather than for… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“In the twenty-first century we will create more powerful fictions and more totalitarian religions than in any previous era. With the help… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Data religion now says that your every word and action is part of the great data flow, that the algorithms are constantly… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Religion is interested above all in order. It aims to create and maintain the social structure. Science is interested above all in… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The crucial historical role of religion has been to give superhuman legitimacy to these fragile structures. Religions assert that our laws are… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Moreover, most faiths turned death into the main source of meaning in life. Try to imagine Islam, Christianity or the ancient Egyptian… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“the ethical and political ideas of Locke, Rousseau and Jefferson. However, once the heretical scientific insights are translated into everyday technology, routine… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Hence a bolder techno-religion seeks to sever the humanist umbilical cord altogether. It foresees a world that does not revolve around the… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Similarly in many countries around the world, including the USA and the UK, witnesses in courts put their hand on a bible… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The average Christian believes in the monotheist God, but also in the dualist Devil, in polytheist saints, and in animist ghosts. Scholars… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
You take fantasies, which for thousands of years belonged to the religious realm - overcoming death or our merging with the universe… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Sapiens instinctively divide humanity into two parts, ‘we’ and ‘they’. We are people like you and me, who share our language, religion… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The modern age has witnessed the rise of a number of new natural-law religions, such as liberalism, Communism, capitalism, nationalism and Nazism.… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Monotheists have tended to be far more fanatical and missionary than polytheists. A religion that recognises the legitimacy of other faiths implies… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The great political, artistic, and religious project of modernity has been to find a meaning to life that is not rooted in… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Throughout history, religions and ideologies did not sanctify life itself. They always sanctified something above or beyond earthly existence, and were consequently… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“For thousands of years, philosophers, thinkers and prophets have besmirched money and called it the root of all evil. Be that as… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Humans want to merge into the data flow because when you are part of the data flow you are part of something… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“For similar reasons, archaic humans did not initiate any revolutions. As far as we can tell, changes in social patterns, the invention of new… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“Today the main source of wealth is knowledge. And whereas you can conquer oil fields through war, you cannot acquire knowledge that way.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
I think the basic thing that happened is we have lost our story. Humans think in stories, and we try to make sense of… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“Whereas chimpanzees spend five hours a day chewing raw food, a single hour suffices for people eating cooked food. The advent of cooking enabled… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“Whereas liberalism merged with the milder versions of nationalism to protect the unique experiences of each human community, evolutionary humanists such as Hitler identified… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“Corporations, money and nations exist only in our imagination. We invented them to serve us; why do we find ourselves sacrificing our lives in… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“Small children in affluent societies often dislike showering, and it takes them years of education and parental discipline to adopt this supposedly attractive custom.… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“Ever more scholars see cultures as a kind of mental infection or parasite, with humans as its unwitting host. Organic parasites, such as viruses,… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“Soviet Communism was a fanatical and missionary religion. A devout Communist could not be a Christian or a Buddhist, and was expected to spread… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“Whereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“Terrorists are like a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. The fly is so weak that it cannot budge even a single… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“Yet what happens if the greedy shoemaker increases his profits by paying employees less and increasing their work hours? The standard answer is that… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“A natural order is a stable order. There is no chance that gravity will cease to function tomorrow, even if people stop believing in… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
