Sapiens Quotes

“How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is ‘Biology enables, Culture forbids.’ Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It’s culture that obliges people to realize some possibilities while forbidding others. Biology enables women to have children – some cultures oblige women to realize this possibility. Biology enables men to enjoy sex with one another – some cultures forbid them to realize this possibility. Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behavior, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, קיצור תולדות האנושות

“There are no gods, no nations, no money and no human rights, except in our collective imagination.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.”
― Yuval Noah Harari

“Huius (sapientis) opus unum est de divinis humanisque verum invenire; ab hac numquam recedit religio, pietas, iustitia ...”
― Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Sapient or Savage (The Sonnet)

To be or not to be,
That is not the question.
To be human or stay animal,
That is the question.
Human and animal,
What is the difference!
To be animal is to be selfish,
To be human is to go beyond the self.
There's more to life than us and them,
There's more to life than loss and gain.
There's more to life than money and fame,
There's more to life than dogmatic lanes.
To be or not to be, that is not the question.
Be sapient or stay savage, it's your decision.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability

“But the mistery of the woman is no less a mystery than death. Childbirth is no less a mystery; nor the flow of the mother's milk; nor the menstrual cycle -in its accord with the moon. The creative magic of the female body is a thing of wonder in itself.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Volume 1: Primitive Mythology

“The moral contradictions of our ancestry should not prevent us from reaching a realistic assessment of who we are. When we do that, high hopes are still possible.”
― Richard W. Wrangham, The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution

“The Neanderthal graves and bear sanctuaries, our earliest certain evidences of religious ritual, point to an attempt to cope with the imprint of death.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Volume 1: Primitive Mythology

“But the mistery of the woman is no less a mystery than death. Childbirth is no less a mystery; nor the flow of the mother's milk; nor the menstrual cycle -in its acoord with the moon. The creative magic of the female body is a thing of wonder in itself.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Volume 1: Primitive Mythology

“For the human mind in its polarity of the male and female modes of experience, in its passages from infancy to adulthood and old age, in its toughness and tenderness, and in its continuing dialogue with the world, is the ultimate mythogenetic zone -the creator and destroyer, the slave and yet the master, of all the gods.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Volume 1: Primitive Mythology

“Existem algumas provas de que na verdade o tamanho do cérebro médio de um sapiens diminuiu desde a era da recolecção.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“História foi algo que um grupo muito pequeno de pessoas fez, enquanto todos os outros aravam os campos e carregavam baldes de água”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“The current threats to the biosphere are more than the consequences of human technologies. They are also the expression of Homo sapiens' animal nature.”
― Richard L. Currier, Unbound: How Eight Technologies Made Us Human and Brought Our World to the Brink

“La aparición del pensamiento simbólico marca una de las etapas fundamentales de la evolución humana.”
― Guido Tonelli, Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began

“We have mastered our surroundings, increased food production, built cities, established empires and created far-flung trade networks. But did we decrease the amount of suffering in the world?”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Sapiens is the dawn,
Sapiens is the saint.
Sapiens is the bridge of heart,
Sapiens is the mend.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“Those who have been hurt once by history will probably be hurt again. And those who have been privileged by history will most likely enjoy more privileges”
― Yuval Noah Harari, A Brief History of Humanity By: Yuval Noah Harari- Hebrew Version(Only in Hebrew)-hebrew Literature/ History Book

“Hay que decir que nunca sobrevaloraremos la importancia del lenguaje en la vida de los seres humanos. En realidad, lo que hace que seamos humanos y no ya una especie más de simios es nuestra capacidad de hablar. Esto nos ha dado poder para crear una herencia social, de modo que nos es dado acumular el conocimiento amasado en el pasado, y nos ha dado también el poder de analizar la experiencia, que nos llega en forma muy caótica, y darle un sentido en función de nuestros particulares fines biológicos y sociales. Éste es el don más grande que el hombre jamás ha recibido o se ha dado a sí mismo, el don del lenguaje.
Pero hemos de recordar que a pesar de que el lenguaje nos es absolutamente esencial, puede ser también absolutamente fatal porque lo utilizamos indebidamente.”
― Aldous Huxley, Huxley and God: Essays on Religious Experience

“Hoy en día, después de dos guerras mundiales y tres revoluciones decisivas, sabemos que no existe por fuerza ninguna correlación entre la tecnología avanzada y la moralidad avanzada. Muchos hombres primitivos cuyo control sobre su entorno es rudimentario, se las ingenian a pesar de todo para ser felices, virtuosos y, dentro de sus limitaciones, creativos. A la inversa, los miembros de las sociedades civilizadas, poseídos por los recursos tecnológicos que les permiten ejercer un considerable control sobre el entorno, a menudo son llamativamente infelices, están inadaptados y en modo alguno son creativos; si bien la moral privada es tolerablemente buena, la conducta colectiva es salvaje, hasta el punto de rayar en la monstruosidad.”
― Aldous Huxley, Huxley and God: Essays on Religious Experience

“biology enables culture forbids”
― yuval harari

“Sapiens (Sonnet 1410)

Sapiens is a promise
to stand grounded in people,
Sapiens is a duty
to stand firm on principle.

Sapiens is an alarm
to wake up from apathy,
Sapiens is mindful revolt
against inherited atrocity.

Sapiens is rightful rebellion
against dehumanizing intellect,
Sapiens is sentient uproar
against puritanism boneheaded.

Sapiens is the saintly answer
to the clarion call of life,
True sapiens is saintly sapiens,
all else is desecration of life.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Dervis Vadisi: 100 Promissory Sonnets

“Acreditamos numa ordem em particular não porque seja objetivamente verdadeira , mas porque acreditar nela permite-nos cooperar com eficácia e forjar uma sociedade melhor.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“There’s the cooking-made-humanity theory, popularized by (among others) Yuval Noah Harari’s deceptive hodgepodge Sapiens.”
― Stefanos Geroulanos, The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins

“Sadly, there's no natural balance between war and peace. It takes two tribes to make peace, but it only takes one to start a war.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Graphic History, Volume 2 - The Pillars of Civilization

“Imaginative humans came together to hunt, farm, trade, and build incrementally sophisticated tools for transportation, communication, productivity, and convenience. ... Tribes and villages became kingdoms and empires, only to later dissolve into the cities and countries of a global civilization. ... Today, we live in concrete jungles, store fruit in fridges, cook oats with microwaves, and carry smartphones in our pockets. Electricity lights up our world, while the energy for it comes from increasingly sustainable sources. Global warming has finally convinced us to grow our food and fuel our activities in ways that do not pollute the planet, exhaust ecosystems, or exploit our fellow animals. We now seek to preserve the environmental stability of the last 10,000 years, during which our species transformed from a few million wandering foragers to nearly ten billion technological titans. Today, we are masters of science, exploring everything from the cosmic to the quantum. We discuss Einstein’s gravity and spacetime relativity, while decoding the molecular mysteries of life and longevity. We fling satellites into orbit, hook computers up to an internet, and seed our society with intelligent programs and robots.”
― Ajith Prasad, Tool Makers: A Concise History of Humans & Science

“Proof of the Sapiens is in the sharing.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“We are the story we tell ourselves; understanding our past is the only way to truly shape our future.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Accentuating the principle of a single civilisation (unitary civilisation instead of
multiple civilisations) is the idea the author favoured in national security studies all
along. It helps to explain the sapien chain of progression in a better way. The adopted
civilisation model in this case is a long “worm tunnel” that envelops the entire
human system with graduating sections of development the world witnesses at any
one time—a “train” with differently graded, but connected, compartments in which
the only choice is to move forward not alight sideways.”
― Prof. (Dr.) Prabhakaran Paleri(Foremer Director General, Indian Coast Guard)

“One idea can change the course of humanity”
― B.R. Jallipalli, Waves of Thoughts: Thoughts That Changed the World

“If humans were highly sentient, they would “feel” and “sense” the pull of their umbilical connection to every other life form on Earth, which they literally share the same phylogenetic tree with. Humans have an admirable ability in identifying, analysing and recognising all of the things that they are doing wrong, and yet, carry on doing them anyway. Doing “what is right” is always sacrificed at the altar of greed and narcissism. Compassion and empathy are seen as unexpected, unwanted and unaccounted for overhead expenses within our capitalist system. They are “nice to have”, but a threat to the global “economy”. Compassion, empathy and emotional intelligence are not really seen as an “intelligent” brain function in our species. Manipulation and calculation, the side-effects of our tremendous brain power, are far more interesting and rewarding, and fit more closely our popularized definition of what “intelligence” is. In fact, “intelligence” today is a synonym for military terminology that means to collect information against the enemy.”
― George Tsakraklides, The Unhappiness Machine: and other stories about Systemic Collapse