“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
“Science advances one funeral at a time. Only when one generation passes away do new theories have a chance to root out… — 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
“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
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
“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
“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
“The late modern era has seen unprecedented levels not only of violence and horror, but also of peace and tranquillity. Charles Dickens… — 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
“But the single most remarkable and defining moment of the past 500 years came at 05:29:45 on 16 July 1945. At that… — 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
“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
“Of course, if diprotodons had been the only large animal to disappear at this time, it might have been just a fluke.… — 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
“The way out of the trap was discovered only in the modern era, with the appearance of a new system based on… — 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
“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
“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
“But humans do such things all the time. Because the Sapiens social order is imagined, humans cannot preserve the critical information for… — 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
“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
“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
“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
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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“Whereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“Terrorists are like a fly that tries to destroy a china shop. The fly is so weak that it cannot budge even a single… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“Yet what happens if the greedy shoemaker increases his profits by paying employees less and increasing their work hours? The standard answer is that… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share
“A natural order is a stable order. There is no chance that gravity will cease to function tomorrow, even if people stop believing in… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share