Quotes About Influence

Previous seekers of empire tended to assume that they already understood the world. Conquest merely utilised and spread their view of the world.

Written language may have been conceived as a modest way of describing reality, but it gradually became a powerful way to reshape reality. When official reports collided with objective reality, it was often reality that had to give way.

A Osama bin Laden, a pesar de todo su odio a la cultura estadounidense, la religión estadounidense y la política estadounidense, le encantaban los dólares estadounidenses. ¿Cómo consiguió triunfar el dinero donde dioses y reyes fracasaron?

Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana republic dictator.

Those who resent the mutilation of Indian culture by the British Raj inadvertently sanctify the legacies of the Mughal Empire and the conquering sultanate of Delhi.

The only thing we can try to do is to influence the direction scientists are taking. But since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, the real question 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.

the mind is never free of manipulation.

Qué potencial desarrolló Europa a principios del período moderno que le permitió dominar el mundo moderno tardío? Hay dos respuestas complementarias a esta pregunta: la ciencia moderna y el capitalismo. Los

Ever more scholars see cultures as a kind of mental infection or parasite, with humans as its unwitting host. Organic parasites, such as viruses, live inside the body of their hosts. They multiply and spread from one host to the other, feeding off their hosts, weakening them, and sometimes even killing them. As long as the hosts live long enough to pass along the parasite, it cares little about the condition of its host. In just this fashion, cultural ideas live inside the minds of humans. They

What's the point of doing or experiencing anything if nobody knows about it, and if it doesn't contribute something to the global exchange of information?

la religión ha sido la tercera gran unificadora de la humanidad, junto con el dinero y los imperios. Puesto

These forfeited food surpluses fuelled politics, wars, art and philosophy. They built palaces, forts, monuments and temples.

Everyone always wants money because everyone else also always wants money,

Quién fue el responsable? Ni reyes, ni sacerdotes, ni mercaderes. Los culpables fueron un puñado de especies de plantas, entre las que se cuentan el trigo, el arroz y las patatas. Fueron estas plantas las que domesticaron a Homo sapiens, y no al revés.

Chuck Berry himself bowed to the dictates of the capitalist juggernaut. While he originally sang about 'a coloured boy named Johnny B. Goode', under pressure from white-owned radio stations Berry changed the lyrics to 'a country boy named Johnny B. Goode'.

La cultura puede transformarse en respuesta a cambios en su ambiente o mediante la interacción con culturas vecinas. Sin embargo, las culturas también experimentan transiciones debido a sus propias dinámicas internas.

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

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

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.

Muslim caliphs Arabicised this name and issued 'dinars'.

We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word 'domesticate' comes from the Latin domus, which means 'house'. Who's the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It's the Sapiens.

Humans emerge from the womb like molten glass from a furnace. They can be spun, stretched and shaped with a surprising degree of freedom. This is why today we can educate our children to become Christian or Buddhist, capitalist or socialist, warlike or peace-loving. We

Even universities and laboratories need religious backing. Religion provides the ethical justification for scientific research, and in exchange gets to influence the scientific agenda and the uses of scientific discoveries. Hence you cannot understand the history of science without taking religious beliefs into account. Scientists seldom dwell on this fact, but the Scientific Revolution itself began in one of the most dogmatic, intolerant and religious societies in history.

the alpha male wins his position by building a stable coalition with other males and females, not through mindless violence. In