Quotes from Yuval Noah Harari

The system may push us in that direction, because it usually rewards us for the decisions we make rather than for our doubts. Yet a life of resolute decisions and quick fixes may be poorer and shallower than one of doubts and contradictions.

Yet in practice, science and religion are like a husband and wife who after 500 years of marriage counselling still don't know each other. He still dreams about Cinderella and she keeps pining for Prince Charming, while they argue about whose turn it is to take out the rubbish.

Durante mucho tiempo, Homo sapiens prefirió considerarse separado de los animales, un huérfano carente de familia, sin hermanos ni primos y, más importante todavía, sin padres.

we cannot investigate everything ourselves. But precisely because of that, we need to at least carefully investigate our favorite sources of information—be they a newspaper, a website, a TV network, or a person.

But humans enjoyed all of these advantages for a full 2 million years during which they remained weak and marginal creatures. Thus humans who lived a million years ago, despite their big brains and sharp stone tools, dwelt in constant fear of predators, rarely hunted large game, and subsisted mainly by gathering plants, scooping up insects, stalking small animals, and eating the carrion left behind by other more powerful carnivores.

Under liberalism, went a famous quip, everyone is free to starve.

Companies such as Mindojo are developing interactive algorithms that will not only teach me maths, physics and history, but will simultaneously study me and get to know exactly who I am.

AI family doctor on our smartphone decades before we have a reliable nurse robot.9 The human care industry – which takes care of the sick, the young and the elderly – is likely to remain a human bastion for a long time. Indeed, as people live longer and have fewer children, care of the elderly will probably be one of the fastest-growing sectors in the human labour market.

Cuando Charles Darwin indicó que Homo sapiens era solo otra especie animal, sus coetáneos se sintieron ofendidos

today's world, information and attention are critical assets. It is crazy to give up your attention for free, and to get in exchange only low-quality information. If you are willing to pay for high-quality food, clothes, and cars—why aren't you willing to pay for high-quality information?

Los monoteístas han tendido a ser mucho más fanáticos y misioneros que los politeístas. Una religión que reconoce la legitimidad de otras creencias implica o bien que su dios no es el poder supremo del universo, o bien que ha recibido de Dios solo parte de la verdad universal.

Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people's collective imagination. Churches are rooted in common religious myths.

It's common today to explain anything and everything as the result of climate change, but the truth is that earth's climate never rests. It is in constant flux. Every event in history occurred against the background of some climate change.

A common saying among European soldiers facing African enemies was, 'Come what may, we have machine guns, and they don't.

Writing is a method for storing information through material signs.

The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. 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 domesricated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.

St Paul and St Augustine knew perfectly well that if you asked people about it, most of them would prefer to have sex than pray to God.

Consequently, from the very advent of agriculture, worries about the future became major players in the theatre of the human mind.

The Bible thinks it is perfectly all right to destroy all animals as punishment for the crimes of Homo sapiens, as if the existence of giraffes, pelicans and ladybirds has lost all purpose if humans misbehave. The Bible could not imagine a scenario in which God repents having created Homo sapiens, wipes this sinful ape off the face of the earth, and then spends eternity enjoying the antics of ostriches, kangaroos and panda bears.

Evolution is based on difference, not on equality.

Hayat?n anlam?n? ve hangi anlat?ya inanaca??n?z? bilmiyorsan?z ne yapar­s?n?z? Seçebiliyor olmay? kutsalla?t?r?rs?n?z.

Creemos en un orden particular no porque sea objetivamente cierto, sino porque creer en él nos permite cooperar de manera efectiva y forjar una sociedad mejor. Los órdenes imaginados no son conspiraciones malvadas o espejismos inútiles. Más bien, son la única manera en que un gran número de humanos pueden cooperar de forma efectiva.

For example, Israeli nationalism is very concerned about the question "Will Jerusalem be ruled by Israelis or Palestinians a century from now?" but it does not concern itself with the question "Will Earth be ruled by Sapiens or cyborgs a century from now?

alongside seas and rivers rich in seafood and waterfowl, humans set up permanent fishing villages – the first permanent settlements in history, long predating the Agricultural Revolution. Fishing villages might have appeared on the coasts of Indonesian islands as early as 45,000 years ago. These may have been the base from which Homo sapiens launched its first transoceanic enterprise: the invasion of Australia. In