913 Quotes by Yuval Noah Harari

Meaning and authority always go hand in hand. Whoever determines the meaning of our actions – whether they are good or evil, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly – also gains the authority to tell us what to think and how to behave.

Perhaps in the twenty-first century populist revolts will be staged not against an economic elite that exploits people but against an economic elite that does not need them anymore.

Suffering is not an objective condition in the outside world. It is a mental reaction generated by my own mind.

Modern culture is the most powerful in history, and it is ceaselessly researching, inventing, discovering and growing. At the same time, it is plagued by more existential angst than any previous culture.

In the end it was communism that collapsed. The supermarket proved to be far stronger than the gulag.

Then what will happen tomorrow? Nobody knows.

It is an iron rule of history that what looks inevitable in hindsight was far from obvious at the time.

Successful cultures are those that excel in reproducing their memes, irrespective of the costs and benefits to their human hosts.

Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination.