Quotes About Influence

And what is 'sensitivity'? It means two things. Firstly, paying attention to my sensations, emotions and thoughts. Secondly, allowing these sensations, emotions and thoughts to influence me.

Have you seen those zombies who roam the streets with their faces glued to their smartphones? Do you think they control the technology, or does the technology control them?

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.

The global empire being forged before our eyes is not governed by any particular state or ethnic group. Much like the Late Roman Empire, it is ruled by a multi-ethnic elite, and is held together by a common culture and common interests.

Technology isn't bad. If you know what you want in life, technology can help you get it. But if you don't know what you want in life, it will be all too easy for technology to shape your aims for you and take control of your life. Especially as technology gets better at understanding humans, you might increasingly find yourself serving it, instead of it serving you.

The only thing we can try to do is to influence the direction scientists are taking. Since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, perhaps the real questions facing us is not 'What do we want to become?', but "What do we want to want?' Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven't given it enough thought.

scientific research can flourish only in alliance with some religion or ideology. The ideology justifies the costs of the research. In exchange, the ideology influences the scientific agenda and determines what to do with the discoveries.

The algorithms controlling humans work through sensations, emotions and thoughts.

Successful cultures are those that excel in reproducing their memes, irrespective of the costs and benefits to their human hosts.

Once politicians can press our emotional buttons directly, generating anxiety, hatred, joy, and boredom at will, politics will become a mere emotional circus.

Politicians are a bit like musicians, and the instrument they play on is the human emotional and biochemical system. They give a speech, and there is a wave of fear in the country. They tweet, and there is an explosion of hatred.

With regard to other animals, humans have long since become gods. We don't like to reflect on this too deeply, because we have not been particularly just or merciful gods.

As bureaucracies accumulate power, they become immune to their own mistakes. Instead of changing their stories to fit reality, they can change reality to fit their stories. In

A single priest often does the work of a hundred soldiers – far more cheaply and effectively.

As a species, humans prefer power to truth.

Revolutions are usually made by small networks of agitators rather than by the masses. If you want to launch a revolution, don't ask yourself, 'How many people support my ideas?' Instead, ask yourself, 'How many of my supporters are capable of effective collaboration?

Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have thus been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google. Bypassing

History is often shaped by small groups of forward-looking innovators rather than by the backward-looking masses. Ten

Today most of us speak, think and dream in imperial languages that were forced upon our ancestors by the sword.

Biological knowledge multiplied by Computing power multiplied by Data equals Ability to Hack Humans.

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

the twenty-first century religions don't bring rain, they don't cure illnesses, they don't build bombs—but they do get to determine who are "us" and who are "them," whom we should cure and whom we should bomb.

Today all humans are, to a much greater extent than they usually want to admit, European in dress, thought and taste. They may be fiercely anti-European in their rhetoric, but almost everyone on the planet views politics, medicine, war and economics through European eyes, and listens to music written in European modes with words in European languages.

Feelings guide not just voters but their leaders as well.