Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order. — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“I choose to want to. This is of course false. I don’t choose my desires. I only feel them, and act accordingly.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
The basic human reaction to pleasure is not satisfaction, but rather craving for more. Hence, no matter what we achieve, it only… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Gautama’s insight was that no matter what the mind experiences, it usually reacts with craving, and craving always involves dissatisfaction. When the… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“With each passing year our tolerance for unpleasant sensations decreases, and our craving for pleasant sensations increases. Both scientific research and economic… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“When the flames are completely extinguished, craving is replaced by a state of perfect contentment and serenity, known as nirvana (the literal… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Gautama’s insight was that no matter what the mind experiences, it usually reacts with craving, and craving always involves dissatisfaction. When the… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Gautama’s insight was that no matter what the mind experiences, it usually reacts with craving, and craving always involves dissatisfaction. When the… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“This Buddhist view of happiness has a lot in common with the biochemical view. Both agree that pleasant sensations disappear as fast… — 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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“Whereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
