43 Quotes by David Christian

Gravity is more powerful where there's more stuff.

Learning to domesticate the horse was a sort of energy revolution.

Modern scientific knowledge appeared piecemeal. Historians wrote about human history; physicists tackled the material world; and biologists studied the world of living organisms. But there were few links between these disciplines, as researchers focused on getting the details right.

All religions, all indigenous traditions, all origin stories provide a large map of where you are.

I think what I was after was a unifying story that could bring everything together, that could give me a sense of the whole of history.

Our goal is to see Big History become a normal part of high school curricula. I'd love to see it being taught in lots of languages. A global course.

What we normally define as history doesn't interest me. It's a constraint.

Every kid goes to school full of questions about meaning. You know, 'What's my place in the universe? What does it mean to be a human being? What are human beings?' Existing courses cannot help you answer those questions. They can't even help you ask them.

Humans are remarkable: the first species in almost four billion years of life on earth that dominates the biosphere. This gives us the power, in principle, to build societies in which everyone flourishes. But it also creates great dangers because it is not clear that we really understand how to use our potentially devastating powers.