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Quotes from Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind — Yuval Noah Harari

born 1976 Israel

← All quotes by Yuval Noah Harari

158 quotes

Paradoxically, genetic superiority (in terms of immunity) translated into social inferiority: precisely because Africans were fitter in tropical climates than Europeans!

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

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.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

The religious wars between Catholics and Protestants that swept Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are... notorious. ...[T]hey disagreed about the nature of... [Christ's] love.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

Money... is most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

Cultivating wheat provided much more food per unit of territory, and... enabled Homo sapiens to multiply exponentially.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

The Galápagos Islands... remained uninhabited by humans until the nine-teenth century.., preserving a unique menagerie...

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

Muslim caliphs received a divine mandate to spread the Prophet's revelation, peacefully if possible... by the sword if necessary.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

The modern age has witnessed the rise of... new natural-law religions, such as liberalism, Communism, capitalism, nationalism and Nazism.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

According to... evolutionary criteria of survival and reproduction, wheat has become one of the most successful plants in the history of the earth.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

Religious holidays... have become shopping festivals.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

Anyone who has read... Alexander Solzhenitsyn knows how Communism's egalitarian ideal produced brutal tyrannies that tried to control every aspect of life.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

The moment the hunter-gatherer set foot on an Australian beach was the moment that the Homo sapiens to the top rung in the food chain, and became the deadliest species ever in the 4-billion-year history of life on earth.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

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.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

Religion can... be defined..[:] a system of human laws... founded on a belief in superhuman laws.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

Imperial elites used... profits of conquest to finance... armies and forts but also philosophy, art, justice and charity.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

Only in the fifteenth century - almost 600 years after the invention of the gunpowder - did cannons become a decisive factor...

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

Christian success served as a model for... seventh century... Islam.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

For modern Europeans, building an empire was a scientific project...

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

Money is not coins and bank notes. Money is anything that people... use... to represent... value... for... exchanging goods and services.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

The Stone Age should be more accurately be called the Wood Age, because most of the tools used by the ancient hunter-gatherers were made of wood.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Yuval Noah Harari (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.