“Every culture has its typical beliefs, norms and values, but these are in constant flux.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“A hundred years hence, our belief in democracy and human rights might look equally incomprehensible to our descendants. Dreamtime” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Religion can thus be defined as a system of human norms and values that is founded on a belief in a superhuman… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Religion can thus be defined as a system of human norms and values that is founded on a belief in a superhuman… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“We always believe in ‘the truth’; only other people believe in superstitions.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“All large-scale human cooperation is ultimately based on our belief in imagined orders. These are sets of rules that, despite existing only… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“An objective phenomenon exists independently of human consciousness and human beliefs. Radioactivity, for example, is not a myth. Radioactive emissions occurred long… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Leave science out of it and live in accordance with a non-scientific absolute truth. This has been the strategy of liberal humanism,… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Unlike lying, an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“However, the Scientific Revolution freed humankind from this conviction. The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans realised how… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The subjective is something that exists depending on the consciousness and beliefs of a single individual. It disappears or changes if that… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Modernity, in contrast, is based on the firm belief that economic growth is not only possible, but absolutely essential... Modernity has turned… — 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
“This law, known as dharma or dhamma, is seen by Buddhists as a universal law of nature. That ‘suffering arises from craving’… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“If I believe in God at all, it is my choice to believe. If my inner self tells me to believe in… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“But in its extreme form, belief in the free market is as naive as belief in Santa Claus. There simply is no… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The Theory of Relativity makes nobody angry because it doesn't contradict any of our cherished beliefs. Most people don't care an iota… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The inter-subjective is something that exists within the communication network linking the subjective consciousness of many individuals. If a single individual changes… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Modern culture rejects this belief in a great cosmic plan. We are not actors in any larger-than-life drama. Life has no script,… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Intersubjective entities depend on communication among many humans rather than on the beliefs and feelings of individual humans. Many of the most… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“All too often people confuse religion with superstition, spirituality, belief in supernatural powers or belief in gods. Religion is none of these… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“But in its extreme form, belief in the free market is as naïve as belief in Santa Claus. There simply is no… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Cultural ideas live inside the minds of humans. They multiply and spread from one host to another, occasionally weakening the hosts and… — 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
