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Quotes About Existence

How do you know if an entity is real? Very simple – just ask yourself, 'Can it suffer?
~ Yuval Noah Harari
life sciences doubt the existence of soul not just due to lack of evidence, but rather because the very idea of soul contradicts the most fundamental principles of evolution. This
~ Yuval Noah Harari
2 As Nietzsche put it, if you have a why to live, you can bear almost any how.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
According to humanism, humans must draw from within their inner experiences not only the meaning of their own lives, but also the meaning of the entire universe. This is the primary commandment humanism has given us: create meaning for a meaningless world.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
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
~ Yuval Noah Harari
humans suffer from insufficient data, from faulty programming (genetic and cultural), from muddled definitions, and from the chaos of life.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
Since there is no script, and since humans fulfil no role in any great drama, terrible things might befall us and no power will come to save us or give meaning to our suffering. There won't be a happy ending, or a bad ending, or any ending at all. Things just happen, one after the other. The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is 'shit happens'.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
In the early nineteenth century Wilhelm von Humboldt – one of the chief architects of the modern education system – said that the aim of existence is 'a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom'. He also wrote that 'there is only one summit in life – to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human'.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
Pero el enigma real de la vida no es qué ocurre cuando nos morimos, sino qué ocurre antes. Si queremos comprender la muerte, necesitamos comprender la vida.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
It is doubtful whether Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is really out of our league.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
And if you spend hours praying to non-existing guardian spirits, aren't you wasting precious time, time better spent foraging, fighting and fornicating?
~ Yuval Noah Harari
Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens has 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 gods, nations and corporations.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
If, however, you want to retain some control of your personal existence and of the future of life, you have to run faster than the algorithms, faster than Amazon and the government, and get to know yourself before they do. To run fast, don't take much luggage with you. Leave all your illusions behind. They are very heavy.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
The universe does not give me meaning. I give meaning to the universe. This is my cosmic vocation. I have no fixed destiny or dharma. If I find myself in Simba's or Arjuna's shoes, I can choose to fight for the crown of a kingdom, but I don't have to. I can just as well join a wandering circus, go to Broadway to sing in a musical, or move to Silicon Valley and launch a start-up. I am free to create my own dharma.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
Science can explain what exists in the world, how things work, and what might be in the future. By definition, it has no pretensions to knowing what should be in the future. Only religions and ideologies seek to answer such questions.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
There is only a blind evolutionary process, devoid of any purpose, leading to the birth of individuals. 'Endowed
~ Yuval Noah Harari
?nsan?n hissetme, dü?ünme, arzulama ve icat etme özgürlü?ünü k?s?tlayan her ?ey evrenin anlam?n? k?s?tlar.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
A cultura tende a argumentar que proíbe apenas o que não é natural. Mas, de uma perspectiva biológica, não existe nada que não seja natural. Tudo o que é possível é, por definição, também natural. Um comportamento verdadeiramente não natural, que vá contra as leis da natureza, simplesmente não teria como existir e, portanto, não necessitaria de proibição.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
Physicists define the Big Bang as a singularity. It is a point at which all the known laws of nature did not exist. Time too did not exist. It is thus meaningless to say that anything existed 'before' the Big Bang.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
If you ask for the true meaning of life and get a story in reply, know that this is the wrong answer. The exact details don't really matter. Any story is wrong, simply for being a story. The universe just does not work like a story.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
Más de un siglo después de que Nietzsche afirmara que Dios había muerto, parece que Dios ha vuelto.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
An objective phenomenon exists independently of human consciousness and human beliefs. Radioactivity, for example, is not a myth. Radioactive emissions occurred long before people discovered them, and they are dangerous even when people do not believe in them.
~ Yuval Noah Harari
mundane feelings of heat and itching are every bit as mysterious as feelings of rapture or cosmic oneness.
~ Yuval Noah Harari