Quotes from Yuval Noah Harari

The average Christian believes in the monotheist God, but also in the dualist Devil, in polytheist saints, and in animist ghosts. Scholars of religion have a name for this simultaneous avowal of different and even contradictory ideas and the combination of rituals and practices taken from different sources. It's called syncretism. Syncretism might, in fact, be the single great world religion. The

There is only a blind evolutionary process, devoid of any purpose, leading to the birth of individuals. 'Endowed

Chemists discovered aluminium only in the 1820s, but separating the metal from its ore was extremely difficult and costly. For decades, aluminium was much more expensive than gold. In the 1860s, Emperor Napoleon III of France commissioned aluminium cutlery to be laid out for his most distinguished guests. Less important visitors had to make do with the gold knives and forks.

El sincretismo, en realidad, podría ser la gran y única religión del mundo.

?nsan?n hissetme, dü?ünme, arzulama ve icat etme özgürlü?ünü k?s?tlayan her ?ey evrenin anlam?n? k?s?tlar.

What if superhumans are bored by novels about the experiences of lowly Sapiens thieves, whereas run-of-the-mill humans find soap operas about superhuman love affairs unintelligible?

In previous eras national identities were forged because humans faced problems and opportunities that were far beyond the scope of local tribes. Now we need a new global identity because national institutions are incapable of handling a set of unprecedented global predicaments. We now have a global ecology, a global economy, and a global science—

Modern businesspeople and lawyers are, in fact, powerful sorcerers. The principal difference between them and tribal shamans is that modern lawyers tell far stranger tales.

People with strong families who live in tight-knit and supportive communities are significantly happier than people whose families are dysfunctional and who have never found (or never sought) a community to be part of.

New Guinea, violence accounts for 30 per cent of male deaths in one agricultural tribal society, the Dani, and 35 per cent in another, the Enga. In Ecuador, perhaps 50 per cent of adult Waoranis meet a violent death at the hands of another human!3 In time, human

Maybe someday breakthroughs in neurobiology will enable us to explain communism and the crusades in strictly biochemical terms. Yet we are very far from that point.

For men of science, death is not an inevitable destiny, but merely a technical problem.

The world's first commercial railroad opened for business in 1830, in Britain. By 1850, Western nations were criss-crossed by almost 25,000 miles of railroads

Consciousness is the biologically useless by-product of certain brain processes. Jet engines roar loudly, but the noise doesn't propel the aeroplane forward. Humans don't need carbon dioxide, but each and every breath fills the air with more of the stuff. Similarly, consciousness may be a kind of mental pollution produced by the firing of complex neural networks. It doesn't do anything. It is just there.

When humans domesticated fire, they gained control of an obedient and potentially limitless force.

Unfortunately, what was good for survival and reproduction in the African savannah a million years ago does not necessarily make for responsible behaviour on twenty-first-century motorways

Cognitive dissonance is often considered a failure of the human psyche. In fact, it is a vital asset. Had people been unable to hold contradictory beliefs and values, it would probably have been impossible to establish and maintain any human culture. If, say, a Christian really wants to understand the Muslims who attend that mosque down the street, he shouldn't look for a pristine set of values that every Muslim holds dear.

Dinheiro gera dinheiro, e pobreza gera pobreza. Educação gera educação, e ignorância gera ignorância. Os que foram vítimas da história uma vez tendem a ser vitimados novamente. E aqueles que a história privilegiou tendem a ser privilegiados novamente.

This is the God of the Crusaders and jihadists, of the inquisitors, misogynists, and homophobes. This is the God we talk about when we stand around a burning pyre, hurling stones and abuses at the heretics being grilled there.

Sin la industrialización de la agricultura, la revolución industrial urbana no habría podido tener lugar: no habría habido manos y cerebros suficientes para llenar fábricas y oficinas.

El capitalismo no derrotó al comunismo porque fuera más ético, porque las libertades individuales fueran sagradas o porque Dios estuviera enfadado con los paganos comunistas. Por el contrario, el capitalismo ganó la Guerra Fría porque el procesamiento de datos distribuido funciona mejor que el procesamiento de datos centralizado, al menos en períodos de cambios tecnológicos acelerados.

In a recent experiment a computer algorithm correctly diagnosed 90 per cent of lung cancer cases presented to it, while human doctors had a success rate of only 50 per cent.

These fears were substantiated by scientific studies that 'proved' that blacks were indeed less educated, that various diseases were more common among them, and that their crime rate was far higher (the studies ignored the fact that these 'facts' resulted from discrimination against blacks).

In previous eras national identities were forged because humans faced problems and opportunities that were far beyond the scope of local tribes. Now we need a new global identity because national institutions are incapable of handling a set of unprecedented global predicaments. We now have a global ecology, a global economy, and a global science—but we are still stuck with only national politics.