913 Quotes by Yuval Noah Harari

If I believe in God at all, it is my choice to believe. If my inner self tells me to believe in God- then I believe. I believe because I fell God's presence, and my heart tells me He is there. But if I no longer feel God's presence, and if my heart suddenly tells me that there is no God-I will cease believing. Either way, the real source of authority is my own feelings. So even while saying that I believe in God, the truth is that I have a much stronger belief in my own inner voice.

Humanism split into three main branches. The orthodox branch holds that each human being is a unique individual possessing a distinctive inner voice and a never-to-be-repeated string of experiences. Every human being is a singular ray of light, which illuminates the world from a different perspective, and which adds colour, depth and meaning to the universe.

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as humanism gained increasing social credibility and political power, it sprouted two very different offshoots: socialist humanism, which encompassed a plethora of socialist and communist movements, and evolutionary humanism, whose most famous advocates were the Nazis. Both offshoots agreed with liberalism that human experience is the ultimate source of meaning and authority.

Jede Generation lebte im Grunde genau so wie die ihrer Eltern, nur ein bisschen effizienter. Paradoxerweise summierte sich die Abfolge von "Verbesserungen", die den Menschen eigentlich das Leben erleichtern sollten, im Laufe der Zeit zu einer drastischen Verschlechterung. [...] Mehr Arbeit für ein besseres Leben. Soweit der Plan.

אחד מול אחד ואפילו עשרה מול עשרה, אנחנו דומים באופן מביך לשימפנזים. הבדלים גדולים מתחילים להופיע רק בסביבות 150 פרטים, וכשמגיעים לקו 2,000-1,000 הפרטים, ההבדלים כבר אדירים. אם תנסו למשל לקבץ יחד אלפי שימפנזים בשוק מחנה יהודה, באצטדיון טדי, בכותל המערבי או בכנסת, מה שתקבלו יהיה כאוס גמור. לעומת זאת, בני אדם מתקבצים באלפיהם במקומות הללו, ויוצרים יחד דברים שקבוצות קטנות של בני אדם לא יכלו ליצור, כגון רשתות מסחר, טקסים המוניים, דתות ומדינות.

...la ciencia y la religión son como un marido y una esposa que después de quinientos años de asesoramiento matrimonial siguen sin conocerse.

The most important segments of many religious dogmas are not their ethical principles, but rather factual statements such as ‘God exists’, ‘the soul is punished for its sins in the afterlife’, ‘the Bible was written by a deity rather than by humans’, ‘the Pope is never wrong’.

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.

We do not understand the Big Bang – therefore you must cover your hair in public and vote against gay marriage'. Not only is there no logical connection between the two, but they are in fact contradictory. The deeper the mysteries of the universe, the less likely it is that whatever is responsible for them gives a damn about female dress codes or human sexual behaviour.