913 Quotes by Yuval Noah Harari

En el siglo XXI un banquero que sepa poner un pleito es más poderoso que el más feroz de los leones de la sabana

It is likely that most of what you currently learn at school will be irrelevant by the time you are 40.... My best advice is to focus on personal resilience and emotional intelligence.

Bis in die Spätmoderne hinein waren 90 Prozent der Menschheit Bauern, die jeden Morgen bei Sonnenaufgang aufstanden und m Schweiße ihres Angesichts ihr Land bestellten. Mit den Überschüssen, die sie erzeugten, ernährten sie eine kleine Elite von Königen, Beamten, Soldaten, Priestern, Künstlern und Denkern, die heute die Seiten der Geschichtsbücher füllen. Geschichte ist etwas, das eine kleine Minderheit tut, während die anderen Äcker pflügen und Wasser schleppen.

When Kushim’s neighbours called out to him, they might really have shouted ‘Kushim!’ It is telling that the first recorded name in history belongs to an accountant, rather than a prophet, a poet or a great conqueror.

In Singapore, as befits that no-nonsense city state, they followed this line of thinking even further, and pegged ministerial salaries to the national GDP. When the Singaporean economy grows, ministers get a raise, as if that is what their job is all about.

most importantly, this prediction is less of a prophecy and more a way of discussing our present choices. If the discussion makes us choose differently, so that the prediction is proven wrong, all the better. What’s the point of making predictions if they cannot change anything?

Behind this monstrous shield, liberal democracy and the free market managed to hold out in their last bastions, and Westerners could enjoy sex, drugs and rock and roll, as well as washing machines, refrigerators and televisions. Without nukes, there would have been no Woodstock, no Beatles and no overflowing supermarkets. But in the mid-1970s it seemed that nuclear weapons notwithstanding, the future belonged to socialism.

What then is the secular ideal? The most important secular commitment is to the truth, which is based on observation and evidence rather than on mere faith. Seculars strive not to confuse truth with belief. If you have a very strong belief in some story, that may tell us a lot of interesting things about your psychology, about your childhood, and about your brain structure – but it does not prove that the story is true. (Often, strong beliefs are needed precisely when the story isn’t true.)

As long as he fought imaginary giants, Don Quixote was just play-acting. However once he actually kills someone, he will cling to his fantasies for all he is worth, because only they give meaning to his tragic misdeed. Paradoxically, the more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the more tenaciously we hold on to it, because we desperately want to give meaning to those sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused.