Yuval Noah Harari

“In tribal societies that lack written documents and bureaucracies, the human network is composed of only human-to-human and human-to-story chains. Authority belongs to the people who control the junctions that link the various chains. These junctions are the tribe's foundational myths. Charismatic leaders, orators, and myth-makers know how to use these stories in order to shape identities, build alliances, and sway emotions.”

“In order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order.”

“Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have thus been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google.”

“Biology enables, Culture forbids.”

“So, monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: to argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe – and He’s evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief.”

“Money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.”

“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 behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition.”

“How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined.”

“You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.”