913 Quotes by Yuval Noah Harari

If you cannot afford to waste time, you will never find the truth.

Sapiens rule the world because we alone can cooperate flexibly in large numbers, then.

Modernity, in contrast, is based on the firm belief that economic growth is not only possible, but absolutely essential... Modernity has turned ‘more stuff’ into a panacea applicable to almost all public and private problems, from religious fundamentalism through Third World authoritarianism down to a failed marriage... Economic growth has thus become the crucial juncture where almost all modern religions, ideologies and movements meet.

All social mammals, such as wolves, dolphins, and monkeys, have ethical codes, adapted by evolution to promote group cooperation.

The greatest crimes in modern history resulted not just from hatred and greed, but even more so from ignorance and indifference.

The only sure way to stop global warming is to stop economic growth, which no government is willing to do.

On 23 August 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God’s love for humankind. In this attack, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours.

We want to believe that our lives have some objective meaning, and that our sacrifices matter to something beyond the stories in our head. Yet in truth the lives of most people have meaning only within the network of stories they tell one another.

Rather, he led them against the Manchu Qing dynasty in the Taiping Rebellion – the deadliest war of the nineteenth century. From 1850 to 1864, at least 20 million people lost their lives; far more than in the Napoleonic Wars or in the American Civil War.