“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
“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
“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 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
“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
“Yet, in fact, religion has been the third great unifier of humankind, alongside money and empires.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“because 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
“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
“Religions that lose touch with the technological realities of the day lose their ability even to understand the questions being asked.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The most interesting emerging religion is Dataism, which venerates neither gods nor man – it worships data.” — 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
“Humankind was salvaged not by the law of supply and demand, but rather by the rise of a revolutionary new religion – humanism.” — 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
“Philosophers, priests and poets have brooded over the nature of happiness for millennia, and many have concluded that social, ethical and spiritual… — 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
“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
“nobody really knows what the job market, the family or the ecology will look like in 2050, or which religions, economic systems… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
If you don't like the word 'religion,' you can replace it with 'ideology' - it's largely the same thing. At the heart… — 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
“Whereas the Agricultural Revolution gave rise to theist religions, the Scientific Revolution gave birth to humanist religions, in which humans replaced gods.” — 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
“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
“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
“Around the time that Homo sapiens was elevated to divine status by humanist religions, farm animals stopped being viewed as living creatures… — 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
