Quotes from Yuval Noah Harari

Most likely, both the gossip theory and the there-is-a-lion-near-the-river theory are valid.

We tend to believe that if we could just change our workplace, get married, finish writing that novel, buy a new car or repay the mortgage, we would be on top of the world. Yet when we get what we desire we don't seem to be any happier. Buying cars and writing novels do not change our biochemistry. They can startle it for a fleeting moment, but it is soon back to its set point.

Cuando los gobiernos y los negocios capitalistas consideran la posibilidad de invertir en un proyecto científico concreto, la primera pregunta suele ser: «¿Nos permitirá este proyecto aumentar la producción y los beneficios? ¿Producirá crecimiento económico?». Un proyecto que no pueda salvar estos obstáculos tiene pocas probabilidades de encontrar un patrocinador.

What was the Sapiens' secret of success? How did we manage to settle so rapidly in so many distant and ecologically different habitats? How did we push all other human species into oblivion? Why couldn't even the strong, brainy, cold-proof Neanderthals survive our onslaught? The debate continues to rage.

Muslim caliphs Arabicised this name and issued 'dinars'.

Ancient hunter-gatherers mastered a very wide variety of skills in order to survive, which is why it would be immensely difficult to design a robotic hunter-gatherer.

A diferencia de las leyes de la física, que carecen de inconsistencias, todo orden creado por el hombre está repleto de contradicciones internas.

How do you start a working-class revolution without a working class?

The more significance we give our feelings, the more we crave them, and the more we suffer

El dinero es así un medio universal de intercambio que permite a la gente convertir casi todo en casi cualquier cosa.

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. There

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.' This

Writing and money made it possible to start collecting taxes from hundreds of thousands of people, to organise complex bureaucracies and to establish vast kingdoms.

Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark. In modern times, a small difference in skin colour, dialect or religion has been enough to prompt one group of Sapiens to set about exterminating another group.

It is liberal politics that believes the voter knows best. Liberal art holds that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Liberal economics maintains that the customer is always right.

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.

These are sets of rules that, despite existing only in our imagination, we believe to be as real and inviolable as gravity. 'If

The Human Brain Project,

Until a short time ago facial recognition was a favourite example of something that even babies accomplish easily but which escaped even the most powerful computers. Today facial-recognition programs are able to identify people far more efficiently and quickly than humans can.

Political, ethnic, cultural, and economic divisions endure, but they do not undermine the fundamental unity. Indeed, some divisions are made possible only by an overarching common structure. In the economy, for example, the division of labor cannot succeed unless everyone shares a single market.

A parrot can say anything Albert Einstein could say, as well as mimicking the sounds of phones ringing, doors slamming and sirens wailing. Whatever advantage Einstein had over a parrot, it wasn't vocal.

Though the adult brain is more flexible and volatile than was once thought, it is still less malleable than the teenage brain. Reconnecting neurons and rewiring synapses is hard work.5 But in the twenty-first century, you can't afford stability.

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.

Of all rituals, sacrifice is the most potent, because of all the things in the world, suffering is the most real. You can never ignore it or doubt it. If you want to make people really believe in some fiction, entice them to make a sacrifice on its behalf.