Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.

One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted.

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

Myths, it transpired, are stronger than anyone could have imagined.

a document of its time and place – it was accepted by future generations as well. For more than 200 years, American schoolchildren have been copying and learning it by heart. The two texts present us with an obvious dilemma. Both the Code of Hammurabi

Those once victimised by history are likely to be victimised yet again. And those whom history has privileged are more likely to be privileged again.

Gender is a race in which some of the runners compete only for the bronze medal.

Another example is the modern political order. Ever since the French Revolution, people throughout the world have gradually come to see both social equality and individual freedom as fundamental values. Yet the two values contradict each other. Equality can be ensured only by curtailing the freedoms of those who are better off. Guaranteeing that every individual will be free to do as he wishes inevitably short-changes equality. The entire political history of the world since 1789 can be seen as a series of attempts to reconcile this contradiction.

Consistency is the playground of dull minds. Can you name a single great work of art which is not about conflict?

It’s at the very spot where the Muslims teeter between two imperatives that you’ll understand them best.

Whatever path we take, the first step is to acknowledge the complexity of the dilemma and to accept that simplistically dividing the past into good guys and bad guys leads nowhere. Unless, of course, we are willing to admit that we usually follow the lead of the bad guys. The

Yet, in fact, religion has been the third great unifier of humankind, alongside money and empires.

the book of Genesis

A person who does not crave cannot suffer.

The Wealth of Nations,

This is the basic lesson of evolutionary psychology: a need shaped in the wild continues to be felt subjectively even if it is no longer really necessary for survival and reproduction.

For real peace is not the mere absence of war. Real peace is the implausibility of war.

As Nietzsche put it, if you have a why to live, you can bear almost any how.