“Capitalism won the Cold War because distributed data processing works better than centralized data processing, at least in periods of accelerating changes.” — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Famine, plague and war will probably continue to claim millions of victims in the coming decades. Yet they are no longer unavoidable… — 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
“Since 1789, despite numerous wars, revolutions and upheavals, humans have not managed to conceive of any new value.” — 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… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The threat of nuclear holocaust fosters pacifism; when pacifism spreads, war recedes and trade flourishes; and trade increases both the profits of… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Secondly, while the price of war soared, its profits declined. For most of history, polities could enrich themselves by looting or annexing… — 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
“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
“In many cases, this doomed the refugees to starvation. Farmers, therefore, tended to stay put and fight to the bitter end. 12.… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Do you think that history professors chat about the reasons for World War One when they meet for lunch, or that nuclear… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“And allow Google and Facebook to read all your emails, monitor all your chats and messages, and keep a record of all… — 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
“Whereas in ancient agricultural societies human violence caused about 15 per cent of all deaths, during the twentieth century violence caused only… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“This is an existential threat to the social and economic order, which is why countries wage a stubborn, bloody and hopeless war… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“However, we should not confuse ability with motivation. Though cyber warfare introduces new means of destruction, it doesn’t necessarily add new incentives… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“However, in the twenty-first century the majority of both men and women might lose their military and economic value. Gone is the… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“In order to reach parity in conventional armament, Western countries would probably have had to scrap liberal democracy and the free market,… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The Battle of Good and Evil Polytheism gave birth not merely to monotheist religions, but also to dualistic ones. Dualistic religions espouse… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“During pre-industrial warfare more than 90 percent of war dead were killed by starvation, cold and disease rather than by weapons.” — 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
“When humankind possesses enormous new powers, and when the threat of famine, plague and war is finally lifted, what will we do… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Rather, when famine, plague or war break out of our control, we feel that somebody must have screwed up, we set up… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
For many centuries, even thousands of years, patriotism worked quite well. Of course, it led to wars an so forth, but we… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“It turns out that in the year following the 9/11 attacks, despite all the talk of terrorism and war, the average person… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“THE ANCIENT ROMANS were used to being defeated. Like the rulers of most of history’s great empires, they could lose battle after… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
In 1989, with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism, it seemed that the liberal story had won.… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Capitalism did not defeat communism because capitalism was more ethical, because individual liberties are sacred or because God was angry with the… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The global centre of power shifted to Europe only between 1750 and 1850, when Europeans humiliated the Asian powers in a series… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Designer babies may one day become as technologically feasible as murdering people to harvest their organs – yet remain as peripheral. Just… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“From the dawn of agriculture until this very day, billions of humans armed with branches, swatters, shoes and poison sprays have waged… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“Before answering this question, we need to say a few more words about famine, plague and war. The claim that we are… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“If something terrible happened – such as war, plague or drought – people consoled themselves that ‘We all play a role in… — Yuval Noah Harari Copy Share Image
“The figures for 2002 are even more surprising. Out of 57 million dead, only 172,000 people died in war and 569,000 died… — 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
