“it becomes crystal clear that history is moving relentlessly towards unity.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“This minuscule 2 per cent of the earth’s surface constituted the stage on which history unfolded.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“This is the best reason to learn history: not in order to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“If the curtain is indeed about to drop on Sapiens history, we members of one of its final generations should devote some… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
Animals are the main victims of history, and the treatment of domesticated animals in industrial farms is perhaps the worst crime in… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Ours is the first time in history that the world is dominated by a peace-loving elite – politicians, business people, intellectuals and… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Those once victimised by history are likely to be victimised yet again. And those whom history has privileged are more likely to… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Much of history revolves around this question: how does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations,… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Why did people make such a fateful miscalculation? For the same reason that people throughout history have miscalculated. People were unable to… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“When Kushim’s neighbours called out to him, they might really have shouted ‘Kushim!’ It is telling that the first recorded name in… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
I was taught that if you're going to study something, you must understand it deeply and be familiar with primary sources. But… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Studying history aims to loosen the grip of the past. It enables us to turn our head this way and that, and… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Today, the global average is only 1.5 per cent, taking war and crime together. During the twentieth century, only 5 per cent… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“So why study history? Unlike physics or economics, history is not a means for making accurate predictions. We study history not to… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
You need to constantly remind yourself what is the most important thing that is happening in the world - what is the… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“so why study history? unlike physics and economics, history is not a means for making accurate predictions. We study history not to… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Throughout history, societies have suffered from two kinds of poverty: social poverty, which withholds from some people the opportunities available to others;… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“About 13.5 billion years ago, matter, energy, time and space came into being in what is known as the Big Bang. The… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Such racist theories, prominent and respectable for many decades, have become anathema among scientists and politicians alike. People continue to conduct a… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“It is an iron rule of history that what looks inevitable in hindsight was far from obvious at the time. Today is… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“European imperialism was entirely unlike all other imperial projects in history. Previous seekers of empire tended to assume that they already understood… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“When they enter the classroom, however, they may well discover that the algorithms have got there first. Companies such as Mindojo are… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The history of ethics is a sad tale of wonderful ideals that nobody can live up to. Most Christians did not imitate… — 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
“history does not tolerate a vacuum. If incidences of famine, plague and war are decreasing, something is bound to take their place… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Yet it is an iron rule of history that every imagined hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Among all the world's large creatures, the only survivors of the human flood will be humans themselves, and the farmyard animals that… — 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
I'm a historian. I really like the past. But most people seem far more interested in what you can tell them about… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“It may well be that when Sapiens encountered Neanderthals, the result was the first and most significant ethnic-cleansing campaign in history.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Most sociopolitical hierarchies lack a logical or biological basis – they are nothing but the perpetuation of chance events supported by myths.… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“I teach the kids history, or quantum physics, or art – but above all I try to teach them to think for themselves.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“To acknowledge that history is not deterministic is to acknowledge that it is just a coincidence that most people today believe in… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge… — 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
