Quotes from Yuval Noah Harari

Humans emerge from the womb like molten glass from a furnace.

The third of the biblical Ten Commandments instructs humans never to make wrongful use of the name of God. Many understand this in a childish way, as a prohibition on uttering the explicit name of God (as in the famous Life of Brian scene 'If you say Jehovah …'). Perhaps the deeper meaning of this commandment is that we should never use the name of God to justify our political interests, our economic ambitions or our personal hatreds.

Modernity is a deal. All of us sign up to this deal on the day we are born, and it regulates our lives until the day we die. Very few of us ever rescind or transcend this deal. It shapes our food, our jobs and our dreams, and it decides where we dwell, whom we love and how we pass away.

numerous theories and stories have been ascribed to the Buddha, often without any supporting evidence. But you need not believe any of them in order to meditate.

Así, los sentimientos no son lo opuesto a la racionalidad: encarnan la racionalidad evolutiva.

In the big battle between health and privacy, health is likely to win hands down.

Of the thousands of species that our ancestors hunted and gathered, only a few were suitable candidates for farming and herding. Those few species lived in particular places, and those are the places where agricultural revolutions occurred. Scholars once proclaimed that the agricultural revolution was a great leap forward for humanity.

the internet revolution was directed by engineers more than by political parties.

Consumerism has worked very hard, with the help of popular psychology ('Just do it') to convince people that indulgence is good for you, whereas frugality is self-oppression. It has succeeded. We

intelligence and consciousness are very different things. Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. Consciousness is the ability to feel things such as pain, joy, love, and anger. We tend to confuse the two because in humans and other mammals intelligence goes hand in hand with consciousness. Mammals solve most problems by feeling things. Computers, however, solve problems in a very different way.

Un imperio que no puede aguantar un golpe y seguir de pie no es realmente un imperio.

scientific complex and technological wizardry. All successful late modern empires cultivated scientific research in the hope of harvesting technological innovations, and many scientists spent most of their time working on arms, medicines and machines for their imperial masters.

So good nationalists should now be globalists. This isn't a call for establishing a "global government"—a doubtful and unrealistic vision. Rather, to globalize politics implies that political dynamics within countries and even cities should give far more weight to global problems and interests.

Hasta la era moderna, los humanos achacaban las enfermedades al mal aire, a demonios malévolos y a dioses enfurecidos, y no sospechaban de la existencia de bacterias ni virus

Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder.

Every day I absorb countless data bits through emails, tweets, and articles, process the data, and transmit back new bits through more emails, tweets, and articles. I don't really know where I fit into the great scheme of things, or how my bits of data connect with the bits produced by billions of other humans and computers. I don't have time to find out, because I am too busy answering all these emails.

Lo que distinguía a los nazis de otras sectas humanistas era una definición distinta de «humanidad», que estaba profundamente influida por la teoría de la evolución. En contraste con otros humanistas, los nazis creían que la humanidad no es algo universal y eterno, sino una especie mutable que puede evolucionar o degenerar. El hombre puede evolucionar hacia el superhombre o degenerar en un subhumano.

Really powerful human organisations – such as pharaonic Egypt, communist China, the European empires and the modern school system – are not necessarily clear-sighted. Much of their power rests on their ability to force their fictional beliefs on a submissive reality.

The Bible decrees that 'If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife' (Deuteronomy 22:28–9).

Unlike lying, an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world.

Youngsters are increasingly excused from obeying their elders, whereas parents are blamed for anything that goes wrong in the life of their child.

Terrorism is both a global political problem and an internal psychological mechanism.

Kahneman found that when counting moments of joy and moments of drudgery, bringing up a child turns out to be a rather unpleasant affair.

Heaven and hell too ceased to be real places somewhere above the clouds and below the volcanoes, and were instead interpreted as internal mental states. You experience hell every time you ignite the fires of anger and hatred within your heart; and you enjoy heavenly bliss every time you forgive your enemies, repent your own misdeeds and share your wealth with the poor.