“When genetic engineering and artificial intelligence reveal their full potential, liberalism, democracy and free markets might become as obsolete as flint knives,… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Nobody in twelfth-century England knew what human rights were. You want to travel to the Middle East and risk your life not… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Still, humans have a wonderful capacity to believe in contradictions. So it should not come as a surprise that millions of pious… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“For millions upon millions of years, feelings were the best algorithms in the world. Hence in the days of Confucius, of Muhammad… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“What did priests, rabbis and muftis discover in the twentieth century that can be mentioned in the same breath as antibiotics, computers… — 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
“Ask yourself: what was the most influential discovery, invention or creation of the twentieth century? That’s a difficult question, because it is… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Similarly, the fact that another person believes in cowry shells, or dollars, or electronic data, is enough to strengthen our own belief… — 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
“Thus European right-wing parties which oppose Muslim immigration usually take care to avoid racial terminology. Marine Le Pen’s speechwriters would have been… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Today Hindu revivalists, pious Muslims, Japanese nationalists and Chinese communists may declare their adherence to very different values and goals, but they… — 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
