{"author":"Yuval Noah Harari","author_id":"Yuval+Noah+Harari","total_quotes":54,"quotes":[{"text":"Sapiens don’t behave according to a cold mathematical logic, but rather according to a warm social logic. We are ruled by emotions.","author":"Yuval Noah Harari","tags":["emotions","logic","sapiens"],"id":19627,"author_id":"Yuval+Noah+Harari"},{"text":"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.","author":"Yuval Noah Harari","tags":["history","understanding","widen-horizons"],"id":20724,"author_id":"Yuval+Noah+Harari"},{"text":"The capitalist and consumerist ethics are two sides of the same coin, a merger of two commandments. The supreme commandment of the rich is ‘Invest!’ The supreme commandment of the rest of us is ‘Buy!’ The capitalist–consumerist ethic is revolutionary in another respect. Most previous ethical systems presented people with a pretty tough deal. They were promised paradise, but only if they cultivated compassion and tolerance, overcame craving and anger, and restrained their selfish interests. This was too tough for most. The history of ethics is a sad tale of wonderful ideals that nobody can live up to. Most Christians did not imitate Christ, most Buddhists failed to follow Buddha, and most Confucians would have caused Confucius a temper tantrum. In contrast, most people today successfully live up to the capitalist–consumerist ideal. The new ethic promises paradise on condition that the rich remain greedy and spend their time making more money and that the masses give free reign to their cravings and passions and buy more and more. This is the first religion in history whose followers actually do what they are asked to do. How though do we know that we'll really get paradise in return? We've seen it on television.","author":"Yuval Noah Harari","tags":["capitalism","capitalist","consumerism","inequality","poor","religion","rich"],"id":25126,"author_id":"Yuval+Noah+Harari"},{"text":"This is the best reason to learn history: not in order to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine alternative destinies. Of course this is not total freedom - we cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better than none.","author":"Yuval Noah Harari","tags":["deus","harari","history","homo","noah","sapiens","yuval"],"id":26023,"author_id":"Yuval+Noah+Harari"},{"text":"If you experience sadness without craving that the sadness go away, you continue to feel sadness, but you do not suffer from it. There can actually be richness in the sadness. If you experience joy without craving that the joy linger and intensify, you continue to feel joy without losing your peace of mind.","author":"Yuval Noah Harari","tags":["emotions","joy","sadness","suffering"],"id":35866,"author_id":"Yuval+Noah+Harari"},{"text":"Patriarchy has been the normal in almost all agricultural and industrial societies. ...If patriarchy in Afro-Asia resulted from some chance occurrence, why were the Aztecs and Incas patriarchal? It is far more likely that even though the precise definition of man and woman varies between cultures, there is some universal biological reason why almost all cultures valued manhood over womanhood. We do not know what this reason is; there are plenty of theories, none of the convincing.","author":"Yuval Noah Harari","tags":["culture","manhood","patriarchal-society","patriarchy","womanhood"],"id":48987,"author_id":"Yuval+Noah+Harari"},{"text":"The only thing we can try to do is to influence the direction scientists are taking. Since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, perhaps the real questions facing us is not 'What do we want to become?', but 'What do we want to want?' Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven't given it enough thought.","author":"Yuval Noah Harari","tags":["desires","futurology","genetic-engineering","human-desire","science","transhumanism"],"id":62508,"author_id":"Yuval+Noah+Harari"},{"text":"There are no gods, no nations, no money and no human rights, except in our collective imagination.","author":"Yuval Noah Harari","tags":["human","sapiens","science"],"id":64062,"author_id":"Yuval+Noah+Harari"},{"text":"Buddhism does not deny the existence of gods—they are described as powerful beings who can bring rains and victories—but they have no influence on the law that suffering arises from craving. If the mind of a person is free of all craving, no god can make him miserable. Conversely, once craving arises in a person's mind, all the gods in the universe cannot save him from suffering.","author":"Yuval Noah Harari","tags":["buddhism"],"id":74193,"author_id":"Yuval+Noah+Harari"},{"text":"We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society. Imagined orders are not evil conspiracies or useless mirages. Rather, they are the only way large numbers of humans can cooperate effectivelyy.","author":"Yuval Noah Harari","tags":["religion","society"],"id":81079,"author_id":"Yuval+Noah+Harari"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":54,"pages":6,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}