Quotes from Yuval Noah Harari

The name 'denarius' became a generic name for coins.

If mosquitoes buzzed in our ears and disturbed our sleep, we knew how to kill the mosquitoes; but if a thought buzzed in our mind and kept us awake at night, most of us did not know how to kill the thought.

At first the rebels seemed to play the role of Don Quixote, courageously tilting at invincible windmills. Yet within eighty years the Dutch had not only secured their independence from Spain, but had managed to replace the Spaniards and their Portuguese allies as masters of the ocean highways, build a global Dutch empire, and become the richest state in Europe. The secret of Dutch success was credit. The

39. Brains as computers – computers as brains. Artificial intelligence is now poised to surpass human intelligence. 39. © VLADGRIN/Shutterstock.com.

Throughout history, and in almost all societies, concepts of pollution and purity have played a leading role in enforcing social and political divisions and have been exploited by numerous ruling classes to maintain their privileges. The fear of pollution is not a complete fabrication of priests and princes, however. It probably has its roots in biological survival mechanisms that make humans feel an instinctive revulsion towards potential disease carriers, such as sick persons and dead bodies.

How did it happen that in the one species whose success depends above all on cooperation, individuals who are supposedly less cooperative (men) control individuals who are supposedly more cooperative (women)? At present, we have no good answer.

A person who wishes to influence the decisions of governments, organisations and companies must therefore learn to speak in numbers.

Liberalism sanctifies the narrating self, and allows it to vote in the polling stations, in the supermarket and in the marriage market. For centuries this made good sense, because though the narrating self believed in all kinds of fictions and fantasies, no alternative system knew me better. Yet once we have a system that really does know me better, it will be foolhardy to leave authority in the hands of the narrating self.

Finally, in 1880, the British government took the unprecedented step of legislating that all timetables in Britain must follow Greenwich. For the first time in history, a country adopted a national time and obliged its population to live according to an artificial clock rather than local ones or sunrise-to-sunset cycles.

We should never underestimate human stupidity, it's one of the most powerful forces in history.

Nanotechnology experts are developing a bionic immune system composed of millions of nano-robots, which would inhabit our bodies, open blocked blood vessels, fight viruses and bacteria, eliminate cancerous cells and even reverse ageing processes.

Tikra taika - tai ne karini? veiksm? stygius. Tikra taika yra pad?tis, kai karas tiesiog ne?tik?tinas.

AI is nowhere near human-like existence. But 99 per cent of human qualities and abilities are simply redundant for the performance of most modern jobs. For AI to squeeze humans out of the job market it needs only outperform us in the specific abilities a particular profession demands.

Whales can hear one another from hundreds of kilometres away, and each whale has a repertoire of characteristic 'songs' that may last for hours and follow very intricate patterns. Every now and then a whale composes a new hit, which other whales throughout the ocean adopt.

The proponents of this 'ancient commune' theory argue that the frequent infidelities that characterise modern marriages, and the high rates of divorce, not to mention the cornucopia of psychological complexes from which both children and adults suffer, all result from forcing humans to live in nuclear families and monogamous relationships that are incompatible with our biological software.1 Many

Tal como lo planteaba Nietzsche, si uno tiene una razón por la que vivir, lo puede soportar casi todo.

Confusingly, these signs are known as Arabic numerals even though they were first invented by the Hindus (even more confusingly, modern Arabs use a set of digits that look quite different from Western ones). But the Arabs get the credit because when they invaded India they encountered the system, understood its usefulness, refined it, and spread it through the Middle East and then to Europe.

It is dangerous to trust or future to market forces, because these forces do what's good for the market rather than what's good for humankind or for the world.

what life was like in the millennia separating the Cognitive Revolution from the Agricultural Revolution.

Even if the market offers a good price, certain things just aren't done. Parents mustn't sell their children into slavery; a devout Christian must not commit a mortal sin; a loyal knight must never betray his lord; and ancestral tribal lands shall never be sold to foreigners.

Humanist psychologists have pointed out that people in distress often don't want a quick fix – they want somebody to listen to them and sympathise with their fears and misgivings.

Arte es cualquier cosa que la gente crea que es arte, y la belleza está en los ojos del espectador».

In pursuit of health, happiness and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human.

Like a government diverting money from defense to education, humans diverted energy from biceps to neurons.