Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark.

Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.

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

However, our capacity to cooperate with large numbers of strangers has improved dramatically.

Just as there is no barrier between humans and other beings, neither is there a strict hierarchy. Non-human entities do not exist merely to provide for the needs of man. Nor are they all-powerful gods who run the world as they wish.

Humans, like many mammals, have hormonal and genetic mechanisms that help control procreation. In good times females reach puberty earlier, and their chances of getting pregnant are a bit higher. In bad times puberty is late and fertility decreases.

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

Until the late modern era, more than 90 per cent of humans were peasants who rose each morning to till the land by the sweat of their brows.

human cooperation networks have been geared towards oppression and exploitation.

So they are creating trillions of dollars, euros and yen out of thin air, pumping cheap credit into the system, and hoping that the scientists, technicians and engineers will manage to come up with something really big, before the bubble bursts. Everything depends on the people in the labs.

shoemaker pays too little and demands too much, the best employees would naturally abandon him and go to work for his competitors.

the 200 year old doctrine about employee benefits and job tenure

unnatural lives that cannot give full expression to our inherent inclinations and instincts,

and therefore cannot satisfy our deepest yearnings.

When things improve, expectations balloon, and consequently even dramatic improvements in objective conditions can leave us dissatisfied. When things deteriorate, expectations shrink, and consequently even a severe illness might leave you pretty much as happy as you were before.

the root of suffering is neither the feeling of pain nor of sadness nor even of meaninglessness. Rather, the real root of suffering is this never-ending and pointless pursuit of ephemeral feelings,

ceaseless arising and passing of all your feelings, and realise how pointless it is to pursue them.