Yuval Noah Harari

"For thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution... consisted mainly of... sacrificing lambs, wine and cakes to divine powers... [for] promised abundant harvest and fecund flocks."

"These polytheistic] religions understood the world to be controlled by... powerful gods... Humans could appeal to these... to bring rain, victory... health."

"[M]onotheistic brainwashing... caused most Westerners to see polytheism as ignorant and childish idolatry."

"In Hindu polytheism, a single principle, Atman, controls the myriad gods and spirits, humankind, and the biological and physical world. Atman is the central essence or soul of the... universe.., of every individual and every phenomenon."

"The only god that the Romans long refused to tolerate was the monotheistic... evangelising god of the Christians."

"Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion."

"The religious wars between Catholics and Protestants that swept Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are... notorious. ...[T]hey disagreed about the nature of... [Christ's] love."

"The first monotheist religion known... appeared in Egypt, c.1350 BC, when Pharaoh Akhenaten declared... one of the minor deties... ... supreme power ruling the universe."

"Judaism had little to offer other nations, and throughout most of its existence... [was] not... a missionary religion.., [but] a 'local monotheism"."

"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."

"Today... there is an irresistible urge to study the exact sciences - defined... 'exact' by their... mathematical tools."

"Confucius, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad would have been bewildered if... told... that... to understand the... mind and cure its illness you must... study statistics."

"The most important military invention in the history of China was ... invented accidentally, by Daoist alchemists searching for the ."

"Only in the fifteenth century - almost 600 years after the invention of the gunpowder - did s become a decisive factor..."

"Until the Scentific Revolution most human cultures did not believe in progress... the golden age was... past,... the world... stagnant, if not deteriorating."

"Throughout history, societies have suffered from two kinds of poverty: social poverty... withholds from some... the opportunities available to others; and biological poverty... puts... life... at risk due to lack of food and shelter. Perhaps social poverty can never be eradicated, but in many countries... biological poverty is a thing of the past."

"Scientists... are not always aware of the political, economic and religious interests that control... money; many... act out of purely intellectual curiosity. ...[O]nly rarely do scientists dictate the scientific agenda."

"Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, ... claimed the lives of... [~]2 million sailors. No one knew what caused it..."

"For the aborigines of Australia, and to a lesser extent for the Maori of New Zealand, the Cook expedition was the beginning of a catastrophe from which they have never fully recovered."

"The Scientific Revolution and modern imperialism were inseparable."

"In 1775 Asia accounted for 80 per cent of the world economy. The combined economies of India and China alone represented two-thirds of global production. In comparison, Europe was an economic dwarf."

"The global centre of power shifted to Europe only between 1750 and 1850, when Europeans... in a series of wars... conquered large parts of Asia."

"Europeans were used to thinking and behaving in a scientific and capitalist way... before they enjoyed... technological advantage."

"The Far East and the Islamic world... between 1500 and 1950... did not produce anything... close to Newtonian physics and Darwinian biology."

"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."