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Yuval Noah Harari
287 quotes
“Christian success served as a model for... seventh century... Islam.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dualistic religions espouse... opposing powers: good and evil. Unlike monotheism, dualism believes... evil is an independent power, neither created by... nor subordinate to...[God].., that the... universe is a battleground.., that everything... is part of the struggle.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dualistic religions flourished for more than a thousand years. ...[B]etween 1500 BC and 1000 BC ...Zoroaster ...was active ...in Central Asia. His creed... became the most important of dualistic religions ...Zoroastrians saw the world as a cosmic battle between the good... Ahura Mazda and the evil... Angra Mainyu.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gnostics and Manichaeans argued... the good god created the spirit and soul.., matter and bodies are... of the evil god. Man... serves as a battleground...”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gautama... attained nirvana... fully liberated from suffering. Henceforth... as 'Buddha'.., 'The Enlightened One'.., spent... his life explaining his discoveries... in a single law: ...to be ...liberated from suffering is to be ...liberated from craving; and the only way ...is to train the mind to experience reality as it is.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The modern age has witnessed the rise of... new natural-law religions, such as liberalism, Communism, capitalism, nationalism and Nazism.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Like Buddhism, Communists believed in a superhuman order of natural and immutable laws that should guide human actions.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today, the most important humanist sect is liberal humanism, which believes that 'humanity' is a quality of individual humans, and that the liberty of individuals is therefore sacrosanct.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the Nazis believed that humankind is not something universal or eternal, but rather a mutable species that can evolve or degenerate. Man can evolve into superman, or can degenerate into subhuman.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nazis said that the Aryan race, the most advanced form of humanity, had to be protected and fostered, while degenerate kinds of Homo sapiens like Jews, Roma, homosexuals and the mentally ill had to be quarantined and even exterminated.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“According to Nazis, Homo sapiens had already divided into several races, the Aryan race, had the finest qualities ― rationalism, beauty, integrity, diligence... [and] the potential to turn... into superman. Other races... possessing inferior qualities... [i]f allowed to breed... with Aryans... would adulterate... and doom Homo sapiens to extinction.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Biologists have... debunked Nazi racial theory. ...[G]enetic research... has demonstrated that... differences between... human lineages are far smaller...”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scientists... have found no soul... They... argue... human behaviour is determined by hormones, genes and synapses, rather than free will ― the... forces that determine... [[w:Animal behaviour|[animal] behaviour]]...”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When Constantine assumed the throne in 306, Christianity was little more than an esoteric Eastern sect.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Revolutions are, by definition unpredictable.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]hy study history? ...[It] is not a means of making accurate predictions. We study history... to widen... horizons, to understand that our present... is... [not] inevitable, and that we... have many more possibilities before us...”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[[Postmodernism|[P]ostmodernist thinkers]] describe nationalism as a deadly plague that spread... in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, causing wars, oppression, hate and genocide.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For most of history, humans knew nothing about 99.99 per cent of the organisms on the planet... the s. ...Each of us bears billions... They are our best friends, and deadliest enemies. Some... digest our food and clean our guts.., others cause illness and epidemics.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Scientific Revolution... has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery... was... that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he prophet Muhammad began... by condemning... fellow Arabs for living in ignorance of the divine truth. Yet Muhammad... argue[d] that he knew the full truth, and... followers began calling him 'the '.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]illingness to admit ignorance... made modern science more dynamic, supple and inquisitive than... previous tradition[s].”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mere observations... are not knowledge. ...[T]o understand the universe, we need ...theories. Earlier traditions usually formulated... theories... [as] stories. Modern science uses mathematics.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greatness of Newton's theory was its ability to explain and predict the movement of all bodies... from falling apples to shooting stars, using three simple mathematical laws.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only around the end of the nineteenth century did scientists come across a few observations that did not fit... with Newton's laws, and these led to the next revolution... the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Throughout most of history, mathematics was an esoteric field that even educated people rarely studied seriously. In medieval Europe, logic, grammar and rhetoric formed the educational core... [M]athematics seldom went beyond simple arithmetic and geometry. ...The undisputed monarch of all science was theology.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today... there is an irresistible urge to study the exact sciences - defined... 'exact' by their... mathematical tools.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Confucius, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad would have been bewildered if... told... that... to understand the... mind and cure its illness you must... study statistics.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most important military invention in the history of China was ... invented accidentally, by Daoist alchemists searching for the .”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only in the fifteenth century - almost 600 years after the invention of the gunpowder - did s become a decisive factor...”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Until the Scentific Revolution most human cultures did not believe in progress... the golden age was... past,... the world... stagnant, if not deteriorating.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Throughout history, societies have suffered from two kinds of poverty: social poverty... withholds from some... the opportunities available to others; and biological poverty... puts... life... at risk due to lack of food and shelter. Perhaps social poverty can never be eradicated, but in many countries... biological poverty is a thing of the past.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scientists... are not always aware of the political, economic and religious interests that control... money; many... act out of purely intellectual curiosity. ...[O]nly rarely do scientists dictate the scientific agenda.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, ... claimed the lives of... [~]2 million sailors. No one knew what caused it...”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the aborigines of Australia, and to a lesser extent for the Maori of New Zealand, the Cook expedition was the beginning of a catastrophe from which they have never fully recovered.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Scientific Revolution and modern imperialism were inseparable.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In 1775 Asia accounted for 80 per cent of the world economy. The combined economies of India and China alone represented two-thirds of global production. In comparison, Europe was an economic dwarf.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The global centre of power shifted to Europe only between 1750 and 1850, when Europeans... in a series of wars... conquered large parts of Asia.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Europeans were used to thinking and behaving in a scientific and capitalist way... before they enjoyed... technological advantage.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Far East and the Islamic world... between 1500 and 1950... did not produce anything... close to Newtonian physics and Darwinian biology.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, almost every important military expedition that left Europe... had on board scientists who set out... to... make scientific discoveries.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he took 165 scholars.... Among other things, they founded... , and made... contributions to the study of religion, linguistics and botany.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The European imperial expeditions transformed... history... from... isolated peoples and cultures... [to] the history of a single integrated human society.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Columbus's fleet... of three small ships manned by 120 sailors... was like a trio of mosquitoes compared to Zheng He's drove of dragons.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For modern Europeans, building an empire was a scientific project...”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he Great Survey of India... lasted sixty years. ...[T]he British ...mapped the whole of India, marking borders... and calculating... the... height of Mount Everest and other Himalayan peaks.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Money has been essential both for building empires and for promoting science. Neither modern armies nor university laboratories can be sustained without banks.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]o understand modern economic history, you need to understand... a single word... growth.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Smith's claim that the selfish human urge... is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary.., not just from an economic... but... more so from a moral and political perspective. ...Smith says.., greed is good, and... by becoming richer I benefit everybody... is altruism.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Capitalism distinguishes 'capital' from mere 'wealth'. Capital consists of... resources... invested in production. Wealth... is buried... or wasted on unproductive activities.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Napoleon... [called the British] a nation of shopkeepers. Yet these shopkeepers defeated Napoleon... and their empire was the largest the world has ever seen.”
Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source