“For millions of years we were enhanced chimpanzees. In the future, we may become oversized ants.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“in the not-so-distant future we might again have to contend with non-sapiens humans.” — 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
“The only way to build Göbekli Tepe was for thousands of foragers belonging to different bands and tribes to cooperate over an… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Consumerism and nationalism work extra hours to make us imagine that millions of strangers belong to the same community as ourselves, that… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“No investigation of our divine future can ignore our own animal past, or our relations with other animals – because the relationship… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the twenty-first century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Peasants were worried about the future not just because they had more cause for worry, but also because they could do something… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Physicists define the Big Bang as a singularity. It is a point at which all the known laws of nature did not… — 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
“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
“Even plants and animals were mechanised. Around the time that Homo sapiens was elevated to divine status by humanist religions, farm animals… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Whatever path we take, the first step is to acknowledge the complexity of the dilemma and to accept that simplistically dividing the… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“In times of war, men’s control of the armed forces has made them the masters of civilian society, too. They then used… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“With time, the racism spread to more and more cultural arenas. American aesthetic culture was built around white standards of beauty. 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
In Judaism or Christianity and so forth, you invent rules that don't exist anywhere except in your imagination. You spend your life… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the 21st century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant… — 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
“Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally they… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The trap snapped shut. The pursuit of an easier life resulted in much hardship, and not for the last time. It happens… — 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
“Why does the theory of evolution provoke such objections, whereas nobody seems to care about the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics?… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The problem, according to Buddhism, is that our feelings are no more than fleeting vibrations, changing every moment, like the ocean waves.… — 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
“once you stop craving particular feelings, you can just accept them for what they are. You live in the present moment instead… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Why does the theory of evolution provoke such objections, whereas nobody seems to care about the theory of relativity or quantum mechanics?… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“What enables banks – and the entire economy – to survive and flourish is our trust in the future. This trust is… — 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
“Why are revolutions so rare? Why do the masses sometimes clap and cheer for centuries on end, doing everything the man on… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“If Marx came back to life today, he would probably urge his few remaining disciples to devote less time to reading Das… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“In the future, however, we may see real gaps in physical and cognitive abilities opening between an upgraded upper class and the… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Kahneman found that when counting moments of joy and moments of drudgery, bringing up a child turns out to be a rather… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Next time a mosquito buzzes in your ear, accuse her of unnatural behaviour. If she were well behaved and content with what… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Planck famously said that science advances one funeral at a time. He meant that only when one generation passes away do new… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“That tale is a fantasy. There is no evidence that people became more intelligent with time. Foragers knew the secrets of nature… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“But, by 8500 BC, the Middle East was peppered with permanent villages such as Jericho, whose inhabitants spent most of their time… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Just as human politicians on election campaigns go around shaking hands and kissing babies, so aspirants to the top position in a… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Mass famines still strike some areas from time to time, but they are exceptional, and they are almost always caused by human… — 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
