Quotes from Yuval Noah Harari

believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights – and the money paid out in fees.

Around 8500 BC the largest settlements in the world were villages such as Jericho, which contained a few hundred individuals.

However, most people don't like to admit that they are fools. Consequently, the more they sacrifice for a particular belief, the stronger their faith becomes.

Una revolución real exige, tarde o temprano, sacrificios que las empresas, sus empleados y sus accionistas no están dispuestos a hacer.

Why are revolutions so rare? Why do the masses sometimes clap and cheer for centuries on end, doing everything the man on the balcony commands them, even though they could in theory charge forward at any moment and tear him to pieces?

The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me' (Mark 14:7).

Can you name a single great work of art which is not about conflict?

Unless you are happy to entrust the future of life to the mercy of quarterly revenue reports, you need a clear idea what life is all about.

We cannot be sure of the specifics; change itself is the only certainty.

If gods can possess land and employ people, why not algorithms?

The supreme value of this new religion is 'information flow'. If life is the movement of information, and if we think that life is good, it follows that we should deepen and broaden the flow of information in the universe.

Particularly telling are civilisation-style strategy games, such as Minecraft, The Settlers of Catan or Sid Meier's Civilization. The game may be set in the Middle Ages, the Stone Age or some imaginary fairy land, but the principles always remain the same – and are always capitalist.

Nunca antes la paz ha sido tan generalizada hasta el punto de que la gente ni siquiera puede imaginar la guerra.

It is impossible to organise an army solely by coercion. At least some of the commanders and soldiers must truly believe in something, be it God, honour, motherland, manhood or money.

like the social instincts of chimps, those of humans were adapted only for small intimate groups. When the group grew too large, its social order destabilised and the band split.

Sociological research has shown that the maximum 'natural' size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals.

humankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans themselves failed to adjust. Most top predators of the planet are majestic creatures. Millions of years of dominion have filled them with self-confidence. Sapiens by contrast is more like a banana-republic dictator.

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

zipper's operation. Most people had no idea.2 This is what Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach have termed "the knowledge illusion." We think we know a lot, even though individually we know very little, because we treat knowledge in the minds of others as if it were our own.

the world is full of misery, it is our duty to find solutions.

Así como cuando dos notas musicales discordantes que se tocan juntas obligan a una pieza musical a avanzar, la discordancia en nuestros pensamientos, ideas y valores nos fuerzan a pensar, reevaluar y criticar. La consistencia es el campo de juego de las mentes obtusas.

Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He's evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.

Over the last few years, banks and governments have been frenziedly printing money. Everybody is terrified that the current economic crisis may stop the growth of the economy. So they are creating trillions of dollars, euros and yen out of thin air, pumping cheap credit into the system, and hoping that the scientists, technicians and engineers will manage to come up with something really big,

Scepticism about the afterlife drives humankind to seek not only immortality, but also earthly happiness.