Quotes About Unity

In order to flourish we still need to ground ourselves in intimate communities. For millions of years, humans have been adapted to living in small bands of no more than a few dozen people. Even today most of us find it impossible to really know more than 150 individuals, irrespective of how many Facebook friends we boast.4 And if we don't belong to any intimate community, we humans feel lonely and alienated.

both Republicans and Democrats should occasionally take a break from their heated quarrels to remind themselves that they all agree on fundamentals, such as free elections, an independent judiciary, and human rights.

Merchants, conquerors and prophets were the first people who managed to transcend the binary evolutionary division, 'us vs them', and to foresee the potential unity of humankind.

One potential remedy for human stupidity is a dose of humility. National, religious, and cultural tensions are made worse by the grandiose feeling that my nation, my religion, and my culture are the most important in the world—and therefore my interests should come before the interests of anyone else, or of humankind as a whole. How can we make nations, religions, and cultures a bit more realistic and modest about their true place in the world?

When everybody uses the same oracle, and everybody believes the oracle, the oracle turns into a sovereign.

Yet since these triumphs actually result from mass cooperation, it is far less clear why they should make us revere individual humans.

Sapiens rule the world because we alone can cooperate flexibly in large numbers, then

Can a nation really suffer? Has a nation eyes, hands, senses, affections and passions? If you prick it, can it bleed? Obviously not. If it is defeated in war, loses a province, or even forfeits its independence, still it cannot experience pain, sadness or any other kind of misery, for it has no body, no mind, and no feelings whatsoever. In truth, it is just a metaphor.

By waving a colorful flag and singing an anthem you transform the nation from an abstract story into a tangible reality.

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.

Fictions enable us to cooperate better. The price we pay is that the same fictions also determine the goals of our cooperation. So we may have very elaborate systems of cooperation, which are harnessed to serve fictional aims and interests. Consequently the system may seem to be working well, but only if we adopt the systems own criteria.

Alternatively, people might completely give up on having a global story of any kind and instead seek shelter in local nationalist and religious tales.

Humans of all creeds would do well to take humility more seriously.

We now have a global ecology, a global economy, and a global science—but we are still stuck with only national politics.

Zealous nationalists who cry "Our country first!" should ask themselves whether their country by itself, without a robust system of international cooperation, can protect the world—or even itself—from nuclear destruction.

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myth.

We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society.

When we adopt the proverbial bird's-eye view of history, which examines developments in terms of decades or centuries, it's hard to say whether history moves in the direction of unity or of diversity.

Scholars throughout history have faced this dilemma: Do they serve power or truth? Should they aim to unite people by making sure everyone believes in the same story, or should they let people know the truth even at the price of disunity? The most powerful scholarly establishments--whether of Christian priests, Confucian mandarins, or Communist ideologues--placed unity above truth. That's why they were so powerful.

online giants tend to view humans as audiovisual animals – a pair of eyes and a pair of ears connected to ten fingers, a screen and a credit card. A crucial step towards uniting humankind is to appreciate that humans have bodies.

They argue that all nations today face the same enemies. The bogeymen of globalism, multiculturalism, and immigration are threatening to destroy the traditions and identities of all nations, therefore nationalists across the world should make common cause in opposing these global forces. Hungarians, Italians, Turks, and Israelis should build walls, destroy bridges, and slow down the

The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths.

No hay contradicción entre esta globalización y el patriotismo. Porque el patriotismo no tiene que ver con odiar a los extranjeros. El patriotismo tiene que ver con cuidar bien a nuestros compatriotas. Y en el siglo XXI, con el fin de cuidar bien a nuestros compatriotas, hemos de cooperar con extranjeros. De modo que los buenos nacionalistas tienen que ser ahora globalistas.

They argue that all nations today face the same enemies. The bogeymen of globalism, multiculturalism, and immigration are threatening to destroy the traditions and identities of all nations, therefore nationalists across the world should make common cause in opposing these global forces. Hungarians, Italians, Turks, and Israelis should build walls, destroy bridges, and slow down the movement of people, goods, money, and ideas.