Skip to content

These [polytheistic] religions understood the world to be controlled by... powerful gods... Humans could appeal to these... to bring rain, victory... health.

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

Another quote →

Topics

Religion

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)

All Yuval Noah Harari quotes →

You may also like

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

Attribution

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.