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For decades aluminium was much more expensive than gold. ...Napoleon III... commissioned aluminium cutlery... for... distinguished guests. Less important visitors had to make do with the gold...

— Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

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More quotes by Yuval Noah Harari

Anyone who has read a novel by 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)

As far as we can tell from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning.

Religion can thus be defined as a system of human laws that is founded on a belief in superhuman laws.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

Democracies die not only when people are not free to talk but also when people are not willing or able to listen.

Presidents and generals may not understand nuclear physics, but they have a good grasp of what nuclear bombs can do.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Yuval Noah Harari (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.