Quotes from Yuval Noah Harari

Yet to understand modern economic history, you really need to understand just a single word. The word is growth. For better or worse, in sickness and in health, the modern economy has been growing like a hormone-soused teenager. It eats up everything it can find and puts on inches faster than you can count.

Mentre nel 2010 l'obesità e le malattie connesse hanno ucciso circa 3 milioni di persone, i terroristi hanno fatto 7697 vittime in tutto il mondo, la maggior parte delle quali nei paesi in via di sviluppo. Per l'americano o l'europeo medio, la Coca-Cola costituisce una minaccia assai più letale di al-Qaida.

Similarly, the fact that AIDS continued to infect and kill millions in Sub-Saharan Africa years after doctors had understood its mechanisms is rightly seen as the result of human failings rather than of cruel fortune.

Marriage is particularly important. Repeated studies have found that there is a very close correlation between good marriages and high subjective well-being, and between bad marriages and misery.

So if I want to experience pleasant feelings, I have to constantly chase them, while driving away the unpleasant feelings. Even if I succeed, I immediately have to start all over again, without ever getting any lasting reward for my troubles.

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has recently confessed that he aims to live for ever. 'I think there are probably three main modes of approaching [death],' he explained. 'You can accept it, you can deny it or you can fight it. I think our society is dominated by people who are into denial or acceptance, and I prefer to fight it.

Kami meyakini kebenaran-kebenaran ini sebagai nyata tak terbantahkan, bahwa semua manusia diciptakan setara, bahwa mereka dikaruniai oleh Pencipta mereka hak-hak tertentu yang tidak bisa dicabut yang antara lain mencakup kehidupan, kemerdekaan, dan pencarian kebahagiaan.

Perhaps in the twenty-first century populist revolts will be staged not against an economic elite that exploits people, but against an economic elite that does not need them any more.

If modernity has a motto, it is 'shit happens'.

At the end of the day, humankind won't abandon the liberal story, because it doesn't have any alternative. People may give the system an angry kick in the stomach but, having nowhere else to go, they will eventually come back.

Once Google, Facebook and other algorithms become all-knowing oracles, they may well evolve into agents and ultimately into sovereigns

They had physical dexterity that people today are unable to achieve even after years of practising yoga or t'ai chi. The

Hands Cave', in Argentina.

So here is that line from the American Declaration of Independence translated into biological terms: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men evolved di

luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.

However, only rarely do scientists dictate the scientific agenda.

Neanderthals made their exit roughly 30,000 years ago. The

Consider a resident of Berlin, born in 1900 and living to the ripe age of one hundred. She spent her childhood in the Hohenzollern Empire of Wilhelm II; her adult years in the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Third Reich and Communist East Germany; and she died a citizen of a democratic and reunified Germany. She had managed to be a part of five very different sociopolitical systems, though her DNA remained exactly the same.

Así es como se desarrolla la historia. La gente teje una red de sentido, cree en ella con todo su corazón, pero más pronto o más tarde la red se desenmaraña, y cuando miramos atrás, no podemos entender cómo nadie pudo haberla tomado en serio.

In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another 500,000). In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes.23 Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder.

Though it has no intrinsic value—you cannot eat or drink a dollar bill—trust in the dollar and in the wisdom of the Federal Reserve is so firm that it is shared even by Islamic fundamentalists, Mexican drug lords, and North Korean tyrants.

The Agricultural Revolution was history's biggest fraud. 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.

Y quizá, lo que es más importante, la inteligencia artificial y la biotecnología están ofreciendo a la humanidad el poder de remodelar y rediseñar la vida. Muy pronto alguien tendrá que decidir cómo utilizar este poder, sobre la base de algún relato implícito o explícito acerca del significado de la vida.

The real problem with robots is not their own artificial intelligence, but rather the natural stupidity and cruelty of their human masters.