Yuval Noah Harari

"Worldwide, wheat covers about 2.25 million square kilometres of the globe's surface, almost ten times the size of Britain."

"[T]he new agricultural tasks demanded so much time... people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat field. ...[W]heat... domesticated us."

"Cultivating wheat provided much more food per unit of territory, and... enabled Homo sapiens to multiply exponentially."

"Neither did the early farmers understand that feeding children with more porridge and less would weaken their immune system, and permanent settlements would be hotbeds of infectious disease."

"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. Then they begin to count on it. Finally, they reach a point where they can't live without it."

"The structures at are dated to about 9500 BC, and all available evidence indicates that they were built by s."

"In the conventional picture, pioneers first built a village, and when it prospered, they set up a temple... But suggests... the temple may have been built first..."

"The domesticated chicken is the most widespread fowl ever."

"If AI can suffer, then it is an ethical subject and it needs protection, it needs rights, just like humans and animals."

"Intelligence is definitely not something that is directed towards amplifying happiness. I would also emphasize the huge, huge difference between intelligence and consciousness, which many people, certainly in the tech industry and in the AI industry, tend to miss."

"Animals are the main victims of history, and the treatment of domesticated animals in industrial farms is perhaps the worst crime in history… At first sight, domesticated animals may seem much better off than their wild cousins and ancestors. Wild buffaloes spend their days searching for food, water and shelter, and are constantly threatened by lions, parasites, floods and droughts. Domesticated cattle, by contrast, enjoy care and protection from humans. People provide cows and calves with food, water and shelter, they treat their diseases, and protect them from predators and natural disasters. True, most cows and calves sooner or later find themselves in the slaughterhouse. Yet does that make their fate any worse than that of wild buffaloes? Is it better to be devoured by a lion than slaughtered by a man? Are crocodile teeth kinder than steel blades?"

"Democracies die not only when people are not free to talk but also when people are not willing or able to listen."

"Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is our own grandmother."

"Homo erectus, 'Upright Man,' [survived] for close to 2 million years, making it the most durable human species ever. This record is unlikely to be broken even by our own species. It is doubtful whether Homo sapiens will still be around a thousand years from now, so 2 million years is really out of our league."

"When humans domesticated fire, they gained control of an obedient and potentially limitless force."

"Some human species may have made occasional use of fire as early as 800,000 years ago. By about 300,000 years ago, Homo erctus, Neanderthals and the forefathers of Homo sapiens were using fire on a daily basis."

"Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark. In modern times, a small difference in skin colour, dialect or religion has been enough to prompt one group of Sapiens to set about exterminating another group."

"It may well be that when Sapines encountered Neanderthals, the result was the first and most significant ethnic-cleansing campaign in history."

"It (Gossip) comes so naturally to us that it seems as if our language evolved for the very purpose."

"In modern society, currency notes usually display religious images, revered ancestors and corporate totems."

"The Stone Age should be more accurately be called the Wood Age, because most of the tools used by the ancient hunter-gatherers were made of wood."

"The dog was the first animal domesticated by Homo sapiens, and this occurred before the Agricultural Revolution."

"Fishing villages might have appeared on the coasts of Indonesian islands as early as 45,000 years ago."

"Sapiens did not forage only for food and materials. They foraged for knowledge as well."

"Most of the infectious diseases that have plagued agricultural and industrial societies (such as smallpox, measles and tuberculosis) originated in domestic animals and were transferred to humans only after the Agricultural Revolution."

"Animism is not a specific religion. It is a generic name for thousands of very different religions, cults and beliefs. What makes all of them 'animist' is this common approach to the world and man's place in it."

"Theism (from 'theos', 'god' in Greek) is the view that the universal order is based on a hierarchical relationship between humans and a small group of of eternal entities called gods."

"Planet Earth was separated into several ecosystems, each made up of a unique assembly of animals and plants. Homo sapiens was about to put an end to this biological exuberance."

"The journey of the first humans to Australia is one of the most important events in history, at least as important as Columbus' journey to America or Apollo 11 expedition to the moon."

"The moment the hunter-gatherer set foot on an Australian beach was the moment that the Homo sapiens to the top rung in the food chain, and became the deadliest species ever in the 4-billion-year history of life on earth."

"The settlers of Australia, or more accurately, its conquerors, didn't just adapt. They transformed the Australian ecosystem beyond recognition."

"It's common... to explain... everything as the result of climate change, but... earth's climate... is in constant flux. Every event in history occurred against the background of... climate change. ...[O]ur planet has experienced numerous cycles of cooling and warming."

"The extinction of the Australian Megafauna was probably the first significant mark Homo sapiens left on our planet."

"No other animal [Homo sapiens] had ever moved into such a huge variety of habitats so quickly."

"At the time of the Cognitive Revolution, the planet was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals weighing over fifty kilograms. At the time of the Agricultural Revolution, only about one hundred remained. Homo sapiens drove to extinction about half of the planet's big beasts long before humans invented the wheel, writing or iron tools."

"The elephant bird and the giant lemurs, along with most of the other large animals of Madagascar, suddenly vanished about 1.500 years ago - precisely when the first humans set foot on the island."

"The Galápagos Islands... remained uninhabited by humans until the nine-teenth century.., preserving a unique menagerie..."

"Don't believe... that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record... for driving the most plant and animal species to... extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology."

"Even today, with all our advanced technology, more than 90 per cent of the calories that feed humanity come from the handful of plants... our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BC - wheat, rice, maize (called 'corn' in US), potatoes, millet and barley. No noteworthy plant and animal has been domesticated in the last 2000 years."

"At first sight, domesticated animals may seem much better off than their wild cousins and ancestors. Wild buffaloes spend their days searching for food, water and shelter, and are constantly threatened by lions, parasites, floods and droughts. Domesticated cattle, by contrast, enjoy care and protection from humans. People provide cows and calves with food, water and shelter, they treat their diseases, and protect them from predators and natural disasters. True, most cows and calves sooner or later find themselves in the slaughterhouse. Yet does that make their fate any worse than that of wild buffaloes? Is it better to be devoured by a lion than slaughtered by a man? Are crocodile teeth kinder than steel blades?"

"'imperialist' ranks second only to 'fascist' in the lexicon of politically swear words."

"At least since the Agricultural Revolution, most human societies have been patriarchal societies that valued men more highly than women. No matter how society defined 'man' and 'woman', to be a man is always better."

"Throughout history, males have been willing to risk and even sacrifice their lives, just so that people will say, 'He is a real man!'"

"scholars usually distinguish between 'sex', which is a biological category, and 'gender', a cultural category."

"People everywhere have divided themselves into men and women. And almost everywhere men have got the better deal, at least since the Agricultural Revolution."

""Dass Gefühle in Wirklichkeit Berechnungen sind, übersehen wir in der Regel, weil der rasante Rechenprozess weit unterhalb unserer Bewusstseinsschwelle abläuft. .., und deshalb glauben wir irrigerweise, unsere Angst vor Schlangen, unsere Wahl von Sexualpartnern oder unsere Ansichten über die Europäische Union seien das Ergebnis irgendeines mysteriösen »freien Willen«s. Yuval Noah Harari: 21 Lektionen für das 21. Jahrhundert. C.H.Beck, München 2018. S. 79. ISBN: 978 3 406 872778 8."

""Moralische Empfindungen wie Wut, Schuld oder Vergebung gehen auf neuronale Mechanismen zurück, die entstanden sind, um die Zusammenarbeit in der Gruppe zu ermöglichen. ... Gefühle sind somit nicht das Gegenteil von Vernunft"

""Gefühle sind (vielmehr) biochemische Mechanismen, die alle Säugetiere und Vögel nutzen, um rasch Wahrscheinlichkeiten des Überlebens und der Reproduktion zu berechnen. Gefühle beruhen nicht auf Intuition, Inspiration oder Freiheit"

"„Demokratie geht davon aus, dass menschliche Gefühle einen geheimnisvollen und grundsätzlichen »freien Willen« widerspiegeln, dass dieser »freie Wille« die letztgültige Quelle der Macht ist und dass manche Menschen zwar intelligenter als andere sein mögen, alle Menschen aber gleich frei sind.“"