Top 100 Yuval Harari Quotes

#1. Another is that the findings demonstrate that happiness is not the surplus of pleasant over unpleasant moments. Rather,

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Yuval Harari Quotes #4911
#2. European imperialists set out to distant shores in the hope of obtaining new knowledge along with new territories.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #7522
#3. Modern business-people and lawyers are, in fact, powerful sorcerers. The principal difference between them and tribal shamans is that modern lawyers tell far stranger tales.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #7609
#4. The average ancient forager could turn a flint stone into a spear point within minutes.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #7627
#5. If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When

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Yuval Harari Quotes #8789
#6. grave goods by themselves. 9. Hunter-gatherers made these handprints about 9,000 years ago in the 'Hands Cave', in Argentina. It looks as if these long-dead hands are reaching towards us from within the rock. This is one of the most moving relics of the ancient forager

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Yuval Harari Quotes #12466
#7. The human collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #36443
#8. Billions of people, including many scientists, continue to use religious scripture as a source of authority, but these texts are no longer a source of creativity.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #45129
#9. Climbing Mount Everest is more satisfying than standing at the top; flirting and foreplay are more exciting than having an orgasm; and conducting groundbreaking lab experiments is more interesting than receiving praise and prizes.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #58830
#10. Henceforth, people became obsessed with the idea that machines and engines could be used to convert one type of energy into another.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #64766
#11. Many kingdoms and empires were in truth little more than large protection rackets. The king was the capo di tutti capi who collected protection money, and in return made sure that neighbouring crime syndicates and local small fry did not harm those under his protection. He did little else.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #65190
#12. Just like equality, rights and limited liability companies, liberty is something that people invented and that exists only in their imagination. From

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Yuval Harari Quotes #70439
#13. Hence paradoxically, as we accumulate more data and increase our computing power, events become wilder and more unexpected.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #72559
#14. Neanderthals usually hunted alone or in small groups. Sapiens, on the other hand, developed techniques that relied on cooperation between many dozens of individuals, and perhaps even between different bands.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #79188
#15. Kahneman found that when counting moments of joy and moments of drudgery, bringing up a child turns out to be a rather unpleasant affair.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #88469
#16. In the past, censorship worked by blocking the flow of information. In the 21st century, censorship works by flooding people with irrelevant information. People just don't know what to pay attention to, and they often spend their time investigating and debating side issues.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #93467
#17. Consumerism sees the consumption of ever more products and services as a positive thing. It encourages people to treat themselves, spoil themselves, and even kill themselves slowly by overconsumption. Frugality is a disease to be cured.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #94428
#18. for the vast majority of life's necessities you rely blindly on the help of other experts, whose own knowledge is also limited to a tiny field of expertise. The

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Yuval Harari Quotes #95910
#19. Science can explain what exists in the world, how things work, and what might be in the future. By definition, it has no pretensions to knowing what should be in the future. Only religions and ideologies seek to answer such questions.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #114106
#20. The modern age has witnessed the rise of a number of new natural-law religions, such as liberalism, Communism, capitalism, nationalism and Nazism. These creeds do not like to be called religions, and refer to themselves as ideologies.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #121938
#21. Today, humankind is driving many species into extinction and might even annihilate itself.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #125729
#22. truth is a poor test for knowledge. The

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Yuval Harari Quotes #127253
#23. the whole of human history up to that point might,

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Yuval Harari Quotes #128157
#24. If a religion is a system of human norms and values that is founded on belief in a superhuman order, then Soviet Communism was no less a religion than Islam.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #128818
#25. Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings. People

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Yuval Harari Quotes #133415
#26. We stand poised on the brink of becoming true cyborgs, of having inorganic features that are inseparable from our bodies, features that modify our abilities, desires, personalities and identities.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #136414
#27. we members of one of its final generations should devote some time to answering one last question:

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Yuval Harari Quotes #139394
#28. Once Google, Facebook and other algorithms become all-knowing oracles, they may well evolve into agents and finally into sovereigns.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #141497
#29. The wholesome and varied diet, the relatively short working week, and the rarity of infectious diseases have led many experts to define pre-agricultural forager societies as 'the original affluent societies'.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #161165
#30. most importantly, this prediction is less of a prophecy and more a way of discussing our present choices. If the discussion makes us choose differently, so that the prediction is proven wrong, all the better. What's the point of making predictions if they cannot change anything?

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Yuval Harari Quotes #170189
#31. Without such knowledge, it is unlikely that a ridiculously small number of Britons could have succeeded in governing, oppressing and exploiting so many hundreds of millions of Indians for two centuries. Throughout

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Yuval Harari Quotes #172875
#32. Most Westerners today believe in individualism. They believe that every human is an individual, whose worth does not depend on what other people think of him or her.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #189427
#33. in many societies more people are in danger of dying from obesity than from starvation.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #197911
#34. Neanderthals made their exit roughly 30,000 years ago. The

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Yuval Harari Quotes #208326
#35. Revolutions are, by definition, unpredictable. A predictable revolution never erupts. Why

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Yuval Harari Quotes #215831
#36. The heated debates about Homo sapiens' 'natural way of life' miss the main point. Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, there hasn't been a single natural way of life for Sapiens. There are only cultural choices, from among a bewildering palette of possibilities.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #217254
#37. Many call this process 'the destruction of nature.' But it's not really destruction, it's change. Nature cannot be destroyed.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #217657
#38. They argue for a reverse correlation between human capabilities and happiness. Power

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Yuval Harari Quotes #226685
#39. In order to function, the people who operate such a system of drawers must be reprogrammed to stop thinking as humans and to start thinking as clerks and accountants.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #233408
#40. scientists took a run-of-the-mill white rabbit embryo, implanted in its DNA a gene taken from a green fluorescent jellyfish,

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Yuval Harari Quotes #238260
#41. Some religions, such as Christianity and Nazism, have killed millions out of burning hatred. Capitalism has killed millions out of cold indifference coupled with greed.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #241533
#42. the alpha male wins his position by building a stable coalition with other males and females, not through mindless violence. In

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Yuval Harari Quotes #253722
#43. We no longer say, 'It's in their blood.' We say, 'It's in their culture.' Thus

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #253764
#44. Today in the United States, only 2 per cent of the population makes a living from agriculture, yet this 2 per cent produces enough not only to feed the entire US population, but also to export surpluses to the rest of the world.9

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Yuval Harari Quotes #264648
#45. Woody Allen, who has made a fabulous career out of the fear of death, was once asked if he hoped to live on for ever through the silver screen. Allen answered that 'I'd rather live on in my apartment.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #265544
#46. Throughout history most human societies were so busy with local conflicts and neighbourhood quarrels that they never considered exploring and conquering distant lands.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #269937
#47. DNA is not an autocrat. Animal behaviour is also influenced by environmental factors and individual quirks.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #270997
#48. The real test of 'knowledge' is not whether it is true, but whether it empowers us. Scientists usually assume that no theory is 100 per cent correct. Consequently, truth is a poor test for knowledge. The real test is utility. A theory that enables us to do new things constitutes knowledge. Over

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Yuval Harari Quotes #282711
#49. Two million years ago, genetic mutations resulted in the appearance of a new human species called Homo erectus.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #282761
#50. Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They

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Yuval Harari Quotes #294482
#51. The most important impact of script on human history is precisely this: it has gradually changed the way humans think and view the world. Free association and holistic thought have given way to compartmentalisation and bureaucracy. The

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Yuval Harari Quotes #299181
#52. happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth, health or even community. Rather, it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #311903
#53. Even Russia nowadays pretends to be a democracy. Victory

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Yuval Harari Quotes #312971
#54. A new branch of mathematics was developed over the last 200 years to deal with the more complex aspects of reality: statistics.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #324428
#55. money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #327285
#56. issued a ban on drug trafficking, but

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Yuval Harari Quotes #327739
#57. We refuse unfair offers because people who meekly accepted unfair offers didn't survive in the Stone Age. Observations

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Yuval Harari Quotes #336431
#58. ...any attempt to define the characteristics of modern society is akin to defining the color of a chameleon.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #345285
#59. Banks and governments print money, but ultimately, it is the scientists who foot the bill.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #347235
#60. {Photo: The Upper Galilee Museum of Prehistory.}

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Yuval Harari Quotes #348276
#61. Few of these forecasts came true. On the other hand, nobody foresaw the Internet.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #353244
#62. Sex is child's play; but gender is serious business.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #360465
#63. How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #361536
#64. However, just as the gap between religion and science is narrower than we commonly think, so the gap between religion and spirituality is much wider. Religion is a deal, whereas spirituality is a journey.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #365734
#65. the details of every legal proceeding

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Yuval Harari Quotes #370916
#66. Eduardo Kac, a Brazilian bio-artist, decided in 2000 to create a new work of art: a fluorescent green rabbit.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #386494
#67. Evolution is based on difference, not on equality.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #386589
#68. Due to their close cooperation with science, these empires wielded so much power and changed the world to such an extent that perhaps they cannot be simply labelled as good or evil. They created the world as we know it, including the ideologies we use in order to judge them.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #388679
#69. This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #391845
#70. the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #394678
#71. more than 25 billion chickens. And they are all over the globe. The domesticated chicken is the most widespread fowl ever. Following Homo sapiens, domesticated

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #398897
#72. Why would any sane person lower his or her standard of living just to multiply the number of copies of the Homo sapiens genome? Nobody agreed to this deal: the Agricultural Revolution was a trap.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #406838
#73. Homo sapiens look like an ecological serial killer.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #411300
#74. Historians study the past not in order to repeat it, but in order to be liberated from it.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #426199
#75. Superiors got all the good things in life. Commoners got what was left. Slaves got a beating if they complained.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #428027
#76. Romantic literature often presents the individual as somebody caught in a struggle against the state and the market. Nothing

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Yuval Harari Quotes #434780
#77. Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa. Think

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Yuval Harari Quotes #439790
#78. There are no gods, no nations, no money and no human rights, except in our collective imagination.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #452218
#79. suffering is not caused by ill fortune, by social injustice, or by divine whims. Rather, suffering is caused by the behaviour patterns of one's own mind.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #459808
#80. We normally think that theist religions sanctified the great gods. We tend to forget that they sanctified humans, too. Hitherto Homo sapiens had been just one actor in a cast of thousands. In the new theist drama, Sapiens became the central hero around whom the entire universe revolved.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #462201
#81. Behind the meteoric rise of both science and empire lurks one particularly important force: capitalism. Were

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Yuval Harari Quotes #497669
#82. Intelligent design becomes the basic principle of life? Homo sapiens is replaced by superhumans?

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Yuval Harari Quotes #500972
#83. We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #506209
#84. That's how history unfolds. People weave a web of meaning, believe in it with all their heart, but sooner or later the web unravels, and when we look back we cannot understand how anybody could have taken it seriously. (p.175)

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #510126
#85. The amount of energy stored in all the fossil fuel on earth is negligible compared to the amount that the sun dispenses every day, free of charge.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #511175
#86. The economic pie of 2014 is far larger than the pie of 1500, but it is distributed so unevenly that many African peasants and Indonesian labourers return home after a hard day's work with less food than did their ancestors 500 years ago.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #515376
#87. We cannot explain the choices that history makes, but we can say something very important about them: history's choices are not made for the benefit of humans.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #521368
#88. 70,000 The Cognitive Revolution. Emergence of fictive language. Beginning of history. Sapiens spread out of Africa.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #524587
#89. Before the Agricultural Revolution, the human population of the entire planet was smaller than that of today's Cairo.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #529875
#90. While he originally sang about 'a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode', under pressure from white-owned radio stations Berry changed the lyrics to 'a country boy named Johnny B. Goode'. As

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #534401
#91. In contrast, upgrading the healthy is an elitist project, because it rejects the idea of a universal standard applicable to all and seeks to give some individuals an edge over others. People want superior memories, above-average intelligence and first-class sexual abilities.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #538173
#92. Just as an all-black workforce might be controlled by an all-white management, why couldn't an all-male soldiery be controlled by an all-female or at least partly female government?

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #542681
#93. An algorithm is a methodical set of steps that can be used to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions. An algorithm isn't a particular calculation, but the method followed when making the calculation.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #550672
#94. Whereas in 2010 obesity and related illnesses killed about 3 million people, terrorists killed a total of 7,697 people across the globe,

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #551506
#95. Many of those who signed the Declaration of Independence were slaveholders. They did not release their slaves upon signing the Declaration, nor did they consider themselves hypocrites. In their view, the rights of men had little to do with Negroes. The

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Yuval Harari Quotes #554182
#96. It was adapted to climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying water buckets.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #554232
#97. It seems that about 50,000 years ago, Sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans were at that borderline point. They were almost, but not quite, entirely separate species.

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #562237
#98. If modernity has a motto, it is 'shit happens'. On

Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari Quotes #575591
#99. Obesity is a double victory for consumerism. Instead of eating little, which will lead to economic contraction, people eat too much and then buy diet products - contributing to economic growth twice over.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #579998
#100. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The kind of thing rich people in ancient Egypt did with their money.

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Yuval Harari Quotes #582931

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