191 quotes
Money is more open-minded than language, state law, cultural codes, religious beliefs and social habits. Money... can bridge almost any cultural gap, and does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age or sexual orientation.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)
Traditional religions... were characterized by claiming to be infallible, that their holy book, their sacred tradition never makes any mistake.., therefore there is no mechanism... to identify and correct mistakes...factual, also moral mistakes.
The Collapse of Truth (2025)
If Greeks and Germans cannot agree on a common destiny, and if 500 million affluent Europeans cannot absorb a few million impoverished refugees, what chances do humans have of overcoming the far deeper conflicts that beset our global civilisation?
Ancient scribes learned not merely to read and write, but also to use catalogues, dictionaries, calendars, forms and tables. They studied the internalised technique of cataloguing, retrieving and processing information very different from those used by the brain.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)
European imperialism was one experiment. Some people say, "The only way to build an industrial society is to build an empire. You cannot build an industrial society on the level of one country because you must control the raw material and the markets. You must have an empire!"
Next Phase of Intelligence (2026)
Nationalism is not about hating foreigners and wanting to kill the others. It's about loving our compatriots... and... paying taxes honestly...
The Collapse of Truth (2025)
Biologists have... debunked Nazi racial theory. ...[G]enetic research... has demonstrated that... differences between... human lineages are far smaller...
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)
The European imperial expeditions transformed... history... from... isolated peoples and cultures... [to] the history of a single integrated human society.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)
Mere observations... are not knowledge. ...[T]o understand the universe, we need ...theories. Earlier traditions usually formulated... theories... [as] stories. Modern science uses mathematics.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)
Diabetes and high sugar levels kill up to 3.5 million people annually, while air pollution kills about 7 million people. So why do we fear terrorism more than sugar, and why do governments lose elections because of sporadic terror attacks but not because of chronic air pollution?
Don't believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology.
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)