Quotes from Yuval Noah Harari

Suffering arises from craving; the only way to be fully liberated from suffering is to be fully liberated from craving; and the only way to be liberated from craving is to train the mind to experience reality as it is.

For the first time in history, more people die today from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined.

When a thousand people believe some made-up story for a month - that's fake news. When a billion people believe it for a thousand years - that's religion, and we are admonished to call it fake news in oder not to for the feelings of the faithful.

So why study history? Unlike physics or economics, history is not a means for making accurate predictions. We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we can imagine.

Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights.

If you want to make people believe in imaginary entities such as gods and nations, you should make them sacrifice something valuable.

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.

The first thing you need to know about yourself is that you are not a story.

Medieval crusaders believed that God and heaven provided their lives with meaning; modern liberals believe that individual free choices provide life with meaning. They are all equally delusional.

Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who founded the Cynical school, lived in a barrel. When Alexander the Great once visited Diogenes as he was relaxing in the sun, and asked if there were anything he might do for him, the Cynic answered the all-powerful conqueror, 'Yes, there is something you can do for me. Please move a little to the side. You are blocking the sunlight.

People rarely appreciate their ignorance, because they lock themselves inside an echo chamber of like-minded friends and self-confirming news feeds, where their beliefs are constantly reinforced and seldom challenged.3

Gender is a race in which some of the runners compete only for the bronze medal.

When the Spaniards first arrived in Mexico, natives bearing incense burners were assigned to accompany them wherever they went. The Spaniards thought it was a mark of divine honour. We know from native sources that they found the newcomers' smell unbearable.)

Earlier traditions usually formulated their theories in terms of stories. Modern science uses mathematics.

The insight of polytheism is conducive to far-reaching religious tolerance. Since polytheists believe, on the one hand, in one supreme and completely disinterested power, and on the other hand in many partial and biased powers, there is no difficulty for the devotees of one god to accept the existence and efficacy of other gods. Polytheism is inherently open-minded, and rarely persecutes 'heretics' and 'infidels'.

Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion.

As Nietzsche put it, if you have a why to live, you can bear almost any how. A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is.

It is an iron rule of history that what looks inevitable in hindsight was far from obvious at the time.

The danger is that if we invest too much in developing AI and too little in developing human consciousness, the very sophisticated artificial intelligence of computers might only serve to empower the natural stupidity of humans.

Religion cannot be equated with superstition, because most people are unlikely to call their cherished beliefs 'superstitions'. We always believe in 'the truth'. It's only other people who believe in superstitions.

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?

When people design web pages, they often cater to the taste of the Google search algorithm rather than to the taste of any human being.

It takes a tribe to raise a human.

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.