Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

Under the right circumstances myths can change rapidly.

As long as Homo erectus did not undergo further genetic alterations, its stone tools remained roughly the same – for close to 2 million years!

The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups.

The things they valued most in life were good social interactions and high-quality friendships.8 They viewed the killing of children, sick people and the elderly as many people today view abortion and euthanasia. It

Don’t believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature.

The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud.2

These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.

People were unable to fathom the full consequences of their decisions.

Partly because it took generations for the small changes to accumulate and transform society and, by then, nobody remembered that they had ever lived differently.

One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.

History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets.

Just like equality, rights and limited liability companies, liberty is something that people invented and that exists only in their imagination.

Voltaire said about God that ‘there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night’.