Historians From Israel

"Christians began... widespread missionary activities... In one of history's strangest twists, this esoteric Jewish sect took over the... Roman Empire."

"Christian success served as a model for... seventh century... Islam."

"Dualistic religions espouse... opposing powers: good and evil. Unlike monotheism, dualism believes... evil is an independent power, neither created by... nor subordinate to...[God].., that the... universe is a battleground.., that everything... is part of the struggle."

"Dualistic religions flourished for more than a thousand years. ...[B]etween 1500 BC and 1000 BC ...Zoroaster ...was active ...in Central Asia. His creed... became the most important of dualistic religions ...Zoroastrians saw the world as a cosmic battle between the good... Ahura Mazda and the evil... Angra Mainyu."

"Gnostics and Manichaeans argued... the good god created the spirit and soul.., matter and bodies are... of the evil god. Man... serves as a battleground..."

"Gautama... attained nirvana... fully liberated from suffering. Henceforth... as 'Buddha'.., 'The Enlightened One'.., spent... his life explaining his discoveries... in a single law: ...to be ...liberated from suffering is to be ...liberated from craving; and the only way ...is to train the mind to experience reality as it is."

"The modern age has witnessed the rise of... new natural-law religions, such as liberalism, Communism, capitalism, nationalism and Nazism."

"Like Buddhism, Communists believed in a superhuman order of natural and immutable laws that should guide human actions."

"Today, the most important humanist sect is liberal humanism, which believes that 'humanity' is a quality of individual humans, and that the liberty of individuals is therefore sacrosanct."

"the Nazis believed that humankind is not something universal or eternal, but rather a mutable species that can evolve or degenerate. Man can evolve into superman, or can degenerate into subhuman."

"Nazis said that the Aryan race, the most advanced form of humanity, had to be protected and fostered, while degenerate kinds of Homo sapiens like Jews, Roma, homosexuals and the mentally ill had to be quarantined and even exterminated."

"According to Nazis, Homo sapiens had already divided into several races, the Aryan race, had the finest qualities ― rationalism, beauty, integrity, diligence... [and] the potential to turn... into superman. Other races... possessing inferior qualities... [i]f allowed to breed... with Aryans... would adulterate... and doom Homo sapiens to extinction."

"Biologists have... debunked Nazi racial theory. ...[G]enetic research... has demonstrated that... differences between... human lineages are far smaller..."

"Scientists... have found no soul... They... argue... human behaviour is determined by hormones, genes and synapses, rather than free will ― the... forces that determine... [[w:Animal behaviour|[animal] behaviour]]..."

"When Constantine assumed the throne in 306, Christianity was little more than an esoteric Eastern sect."

"Revolutions are, by definition unpredictable."

"[W]hy study history? ...[It] is not a means of making accurate predictions. We study history... to widen... horizons, to understand that our present... is... [not] inevitable, and that we... have many more possibilities before us..."

"[[Postmodernism|[P]ostmodernist thinkers]] describe nationalism as a deadly plague that spread... in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, causing wars, oppression, hate and genocide."

"For most of history, humans knew nothing about 99.99 per cent of the organisms on the planet... the s. ...Each of us bears billions... They are our best friends, and deadliest enemies. Some... digest our food and clean our guts.., others cause illness and epidemics."

"The Scientific Revolution... has been above all a revolution of ignorance. The great discovery... was... that humans do not know the answers to their most important questions."

"[T]he prophet Muhammad began... by condemning... fellow Arabs for living in ignorance of the divine truth. Yet Muhammad... argue[d] that he knew the full truth, and... followers began calling him 'the '."

"[W]illingness to admit ignorance... made modern science more dynamic, supple and inquisitive than... previous tradition[s]."

"Mere observations... are not knowledge. ...[T]o understand the universe, we need ...theories. Earlier traditions usually formulated... theories... [as] stories. Modern science uses mathematics."

"The greatness of Newton's theory was its ability to explain and predict the movement of all bodies... from falling apples to shooting stars, using three simple mathematical laws."

"Only around the end of the nineteenth century did scientists come across a few observations that did not fit... with Newton's laws, and these led to the next revolution... the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics."

"Throughout most of history, mathematics was an esoteric field that even educated people rarely studied seriously. In medieval Europe, logic, grammar and rhetoric formed the educational core... [M]athematics seldom went beyond simple arithmetic and geometry. ...The undisputed monarch of all science was theology."

"Most past cultures have... fallen prey to the armies of some ruthless empire, which... consigned them to oblivion. Empires... ultimately fall, but... tend to leave behind rich.., enduring legacies."

"Money is more open-minded than language, state law, cultural codes, religious beliefs and social habits. Money... can bridge almost any cultural gap, and does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age or sexual orientation."

"Our... green and blue planet is becoming... concrete and plastic..."

"Money... is most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised."

"The... money in the world is about $60 trillion, yet... coins and bank notes is less than $6 trillion. More than 90% percent of all money... [>]$50 trillion... in our accounts... exists only on computer servers."

"The capitalist and consumerist ethics are... a merger of commandments. The... rich... 'Invest!' The... rest... 'Buy!'"

"The Industrial Revolution turned the time table and the assembly line into a template... [S]chools... adopted... timetables, followed by hospitals, government offices and grocery stores. ...[I]n places devoid of assembly lines and machines, the timetable became king."

"Money is not coins and bank notes. Money is anything that people... use... to represent... value... for... exchanging goods and services."

"The followers of Christ and... Allah killed each other by the thousands, devastated fields and orchards, and turned prosperous cities into smouldering ruins..."

"Religious holidays... have become shopping festivals."

"Osama bin Laden, for all his hatred of American culture.., religion, and... politics, was... fond of American dollars. How did money succeed where gods and kings failed?"

"The European imperial expeditions transformed... history... from... isolated peoples and cultures... [to] the history of a single integrated human society."

"Anyone who has read... Alexander Solzhenitsyn knows how Communism's egalitarian ideal produced brutal tyrannies that tried to control every aspect of life."

"Consumerism sees the consumption of ever more... as a... positive... It encourages people to treat themselves, spoil themselves.., even kill themselves slowly by ."

"Obesity is a double victory... [E]ating little... will lead to economic contraction... [E]at too much and... buy diet products - contributing to economic growth twice over."

"The first commercial train service began operating between Liverpool and Manchester in 1830."

"When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, he took 165 scholars.... Among other things, they founded... , and made... contributions to the study of religion, linguistics and botany."

"Columbus's fleet... of three small ships manned by 120 sailors... was like a trio of mosquitoes compared to Zheng He's drove of dragons."

"For modern Europeans, building an empire was a scientific project..."

"[T]he Great Survey of India... lasted sixty years. ...[T]he British ...mapped the whole of India, marking borders... and calculating... the... height of Mount Everest and other Himalayan peaks."

"Money has been essential both for building empires and for promoting science. Neither modern armies nor university laboratories can be sustained without banks."

"[T]o understand modern economic history, you need to understand... a single word... growth."

"Smith's claim that the selfish human urge... is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary.., not just from an economic... but... more so from a moral and political perspective. ...Smith says.., greed is good, and... by becoming richer I benefit everybody... is altruism."

"In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, almost every important military expedition that left Europe... had on board scientists who set out... to... make scientific discoveries."