Quotes by Yuval Noah Harari

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While traditionally the family was the main matchmaker, nowadays the market shapes our romantic (...) preferences and then fulfills our needs - for good money. In the past, bride and groom met in the living room of one of their families, and money in the form of a dowry passed from one father's hand to the other. Today, courtship takes place in bars and cafes, and money goes from the lovers' hands to the waiters. And then even more money goes to the accounts of fashion designers, gym owners, dietitians, beauticians and plastic surgeons who help us arrive at the cafe looking as close as possible to the market's ideal of beauty.

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A good historian finds examples for everything. The even better historian, however, recognizes that these precedents are just the oddities clouding the whole.

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No amount of genius can compensate for the lack of adequate financial support (...).

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Romantic literature often portrays the individual as fighting against the state and the market. Nothing could be further from the truth. Today, the state and the market are the father and mother of the individual, and the individual can survive only thanks to them. The market provides us with work, insurance and pensions. If you want to learn a trade, there are state schools. If we want to start a business, the bank lends us money. If we want a house, a construction company builds it for us, and the bank gives us a mortgage, which is often subsidized or covered by the state. When violence flares up, the state protects us. If we are sick for a few days, our health insurance will take care of us.

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The bad news for those who want to bring paradise on earth is that our internal biochemical system seems to be programmed to keep our happiness at a roughly even level. Happiness is not subject to natural selection - the gene pool of a happy hermit is doomed to extinction, while the genes of two anxious parents are passed on to the next generation. Happiness and sadness play a role in evolution only insofar as they promote or hinder survival and reproduction. After this, it is perhaps not surprising that evolution has shaped us neither too happy nor too sad. Thus, we are able to temporarily enjoy pleasant sensations, but they never last forever. Sooner or later they pass and give way to unpleasant sensations.

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Most professionals (...) think about the time scale of academic grants and university jobs. Thus, "very far away" can mean twenty years, and "never" is certainly not more than fifty.

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People want to live forever, so they compose an "immortal" symphony, fight for "eternal glory" on the battlefield, or even sacrifice their lives so that their souls can "get eternal salvation in paradise." The driving force behind our artistic creativity, our political convictions or even our religious devotion is largely the fear of death.

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It is not easy to live with the knowledge of death, but it would be even more difficult to believe in immortality and then realize that we were wrong.

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We don't have to wait for Christ's second coming to conquer death. A group of smart eggs can do it in a laboratory.

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We are constantly taught that human life is the most sacred thing in the universe. Everyone says this: teachers in school, politicians in parliament, lawyers in court and actors on stage. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN after World War II and perhaps the closest we have come to a global constitution, categorically states that the right to life is the most fundamental value of humanity. Since death obviously deprives us of this right, it is a crime against humanity and thus we must wage war against it.

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In reality (...) a person dies not because a hooded figure touches his shoulder, or because God orders him to do so, and not because mortality is part of some cosmic plan. People always die because of some technical error. The heart stops pumping blood. Some major arteries are blocked by fatty deposits. Cancer cells proliferate in the liver. Pathogens multiply in the lungs. And what causes these technical problems? Other technical issues. The heart stops pumping blood because it doesn't get enough oxygen. Cancer cells proliferate because an accidental genetic mutation rewrites their instructions. Germs get into our lungs because someone sneezed on us on the subway. There is nothing metaphysical about it. These are purely technical problems. And every technical problem has a technical solution.

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In the old days, land ownership was the world's most important resource, and politics was about fighting for control over the land. In the last two hundred years, however, machines and factories have become more important than land, so politics has already concentrated on controlling machines and factories. The XXI. In the 20th century, the value of data may exceed the value of land, machines and factories, so data may be the world's most important resource. And politics will be about who controls the flow of data. If the state or a few companies have too much data, a digital dictatorship can develop.

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Numbers alone are never enough for a revolution. Revolutions are usually sparked by a small network of agitators, not the masses themselves. If someone wants to instigate a revolution, he should not ask: "How many of my supporters support my ideas?", but rather: "How many of my supporters are capable of effective cooperation?".

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Literate societies organize people into networks, so everyone is just a small step in a huge algorithm, and important decisions are made by the algorithm as a whole. This is the essence of bureaucracy.

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Schools were established to produce educated and obedient citizens who would serve the nation faithfully.

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Homo sapiens does everything to disguise it, but it still remains an animal.

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The scientific revolution was not a revolution of knowledge. But mainly of ignorance. The great discovery that started the scientific revolution was the discovery that man does not know the answers to his most important questions.

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No god can make him miserable whose mind is free from desire. And conversely, the one whose mind dwells in desire cannot be freed from suffering by all the gods of the universe.

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Man (...) has an amazing ability to believe in contradictions.

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Humans long ago became gods in their relationship with other animals. We don't really like to think deeply about this, because we are neither particularly just nor very merciful gods.

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Yesterday's challenge turns into boredom today.

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A modern economy needs continuous and endless growth to survive. If growth stops, the economy does not assume a comfortable equilibrium position, but falls to pieces.

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Only Homo sapiens can talk about non-existent things and believe six impossible things before breakfast.

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It is an iron law of history that what seems inevitable in hindsight is far from clear at the time. Today is no different.

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Thanks to fertilizers, pesticides and genetically modified crops, agricultural production today far exceeds what the ancient farmers expected from their gods.

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We often only notice the flaws in an idea when it is close to becoming a reality.

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Even Nobel Prize-winning economists perform only a small fraction of their calculations using pen, paper and calculators, and ninety-nine percent of their decisions - including important decisions regarding a partner, career, and place of residence - are made with the help of sophisticated algorithms called sensations, feelings and desires.

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As monotheistic religions claim, animals do not have souls. Even the most detailed investigations have found no trace of any soul in pigs, rats, or rhesus monkeys. Unfortunately, these same experiments do not in the least support the other half of the monotheistic myth, indicating that humans do have souls. Scientists subjected Homo sapiens to thousands of bizarre experiments, examined every hidden corner of his heart and every winding of his brain. So far, however, they haven't found any kind of magical spark. There is no scientific evidence that humans have souls unlike pigs.

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In the course of decades and centuries (...) the web of reason unravels and a new one is woven in its place. To study history is to observe how these webs are woven and unraveled, and what is most important in life to the people of one era becomes insignificant to their descendants.

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No animal can compete with us, not in the absence of soul or consciousness, but in the absence of adequate imagination. The lion runs, jumps, bites and claws well. But you can't start a bank or file a lawsuit. However, in the 21st century, a banker who knows how to sue is stronger than the wildest lion in the savannah.

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Sapiens do not have a single specific way of life. There is only a cultural choice from a dizzyingly wide palette of possibilities.

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Scientists tend to ask only the questions they can most likely answer.

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Do not believe the fanatical conservationists who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the industrial revolution, Homo sapiens held the record for extermination of the most plant and animal species. We have the dubious honor of being the deadliest species in the history of biology.

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Trust is the raw material from which all forms of money are minted.

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People are usually afraid of change because they fear the unknown. However, the most constant feature of history is that everything changes.

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Emotions are not some kind of mysterious, spiritual phenomena that are only useful for writing poems and composing symphonies with their help. Emotions are biochemical algorithms that are vital to the survival and reproduction of all mammals.

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Natural selection forces humans, like other living things, to choose what is best for the reproduction of their genes, even if it is bad for them as individuals. Most males spend their lives struggling, worrying, competing and fighting instead of enjoying a peaceful rest because their DNA manipulates them for their own selfish ends. Like Satan, DNA uses fleeting pleasures to tempt people and bring them under its power.

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Most people misidentify themselves with their feelings, thoughts, and preferences. When they feel anger, they think, "I'm angry. This is my anger." Because of this, they spend their whole lives trying to avoid certain feelings and experience others. They never understand that they are not the same as their feelings, and that by incessantly chasing certain feelings, they only get stuck in misery.

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There are no gods, nations, money, human rights, laws or justice anywhere in the universe, except in the collective imagination of human beings.

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Culture always claims that it only forbids what is unnatural. However, from a biological point of view, nothing is unnatural. What is possible is by definition also natural. It is truly unnatural, behavior against the laws of nature cannot even exist, so it is unnecessary to prohibit it.

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People around the world are gradually increasingly considering equality and individual freedom as fundamental values. But these two values ​​contradict each other. Equality can only be ensured by curtailing the freedom of those who have more of it. Guaranteeing that every individual can do what they want inevitably violates equality.

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Money is more inclusive than language, law, cultural norms, religious belief or social mores. Money is the only man-made trust system that can bridge almost all cultural gaps and does not discriminate against anyone based on religion, gender, origin, age (...). Thanks to money, even people who do not know each other and do not trust each other are able to cooperate effectively.

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Capitalism's belief in perpetual economic growth runs counter to almost everything we know about the universe. A pack of wolves would be terribly foolish to think that the supply of sheep would increase without end. However, the human economy really managed to grow exponentially during the modern age, thanks only to the fact that every few years scientists came up with some discovery or invention - for example America, the internal combustion engine or the genetically engineered sheep. Money is printed by banks and governments, but backed by scientists.

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Capitalist and consumerist values ​​are two sides of the same coin, a fusion of two commandments. The most important commandment of the rich: "Invest, rotate your money!" For the others: "Buy!".

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The history of ethics is a sad tale of beautiful ideals that no one could live up to. Most Christians didn't imitate Christ, Buddhists couldn't follow Buddha, and Confucius would have seriously freaked out most Confucians. Most people today, on the other hand, are able to successfully comply with the capitalist-consumerist value system. This ethic binds access to Paradise to such conditions that the rich remain greedy and accumulate as much capital as possible, while the masses give free rein to their desires and passions - and buy more and more. It is the first religion in history whose followers actually do what it asks of them. But how do we know that we really get Paradise in return? We saw it on TV...

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True peace (...) is not merely the absence of war. True peace is the improbability of war.

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Happiness does not really depend on objective circumstances like wealth, health, or even community. Rather, it depends on the coincidence of objective circumstances and subjective expectations. If we want an ox cart and get an ox cart, we are satisfied. If we want a new Ferrari and get a used Fiat, we are disappointed. This is why, in the long run, winning the lottery can have just as much influence on happiness as a car accident. As things improve, so do expectations, and as a result, even a dramatic improvement in objective conditions does not necessarily satisfy us. But even in spite of a serious illness, we can remain as happy as we were before, if we come to terms with our condition and accept that we have to give up certain things and continue to live.

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The afterlife that gave meaning to medieval people's lives was no less part of a delusion than the humanist, nationalist, and capitalist meanings favored by modern people. The scientist who claims that his life is meaningful because he increases human knowledge, the soldier who claims that his life is meaningful because he fights to defend his country, and the entrepreneur who finds the meaning of his life in building a new company are equally addicted to illusion like their medieval counterparts who found this meaning in reading the Scriptures, fighting the Crusades and building cathedrals.

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This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behavior is useless. On the other hand, the one that changes it quickly loses its relevance.

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Happiness (...) is perhaps nothing more than the alignment of our personal delusions about the meaning of life with the prevailing collective delusions. As long as my personal narrative aligns with the narratives of the people around me, I can convince myself that my life has meaning, and I find happiness in that belief.

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One of the iron laws of history is that sooner or later, luxury becomes a basic need.

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History teaches us that what seems to be waiting for us around the next corner may never come true due to unforeseen obstacles, and other, never-thought-of scenarios may come true.

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From a purely scientific point of view, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humanity was created as a result of a blind evolutionary process. Our actions are not part of some cosmic, divine plan, and if planet Earth were to explode tomorrow, the universe would probably continue to function the same. To the best of our current knowledge, human subjectivity will not be missing from it. Therefore, any "meaning" that people attribute to their lives is just a delusion.

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Happiness is not simply the majority of pleasant moments over unpleasant ones. Happiness is more about seeing your life as meaningful as a whole.

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Anyone who really understands the theory of evolution also understands that there is no soul.

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Among other things, this is the wonderful thing about science: if scientists don't know something, they can try any number of theories, and in the end they are able to admit that they don't understand.

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Since there is only one real world, and the number of virtual worlds is potentially infinite, the probability that you live in that one real world is almost zero.

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Sapiens does not act according to cold mathematical logic, but according to warm social logic. Emotions rule us.

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Anyone who has dealt with the IRS, the education system, or any complex bureaucracy knows that the truth is of little importance. What is written on our data sheet is much more important.

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As every child, teacher and superintendent knows, the skills required to get a good mark in an exam are not the same as the ability to truly understand literature, biology or mathematics. And every child, teacher and superintendent is also aware that if they have to choose between the two, most schools choose good grades.

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The power of human wisdom is great, but we can never underestimate human stupidity either.

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The XXI. The most important fact of 20th century life is that people have become hackable animals. If you have enough data and enough computing power, you can hack people and understand them better than they understand themselves. You can predict their decisions, manipulate their desires and sell them anything you want, be it a politician or a commodity. This means that data is becoming the most important resource in the world.

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Some nationalists believe that the world consists of many closed but friendly fortresses. Each national stronghold will retain its own interests and identity, but the strongholds will still be able to trade and cooperate peacefully. There will be no immigration, multiculturalism, global elite - nor global war. The problem with this idea is that protected fortresses are rarely friendly. In the past, all attempts to divide the world into well-separated nations resulted in war and genocide.

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We will be much wiser if we do not only talk to one type of person throughout our lives.

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Technology alone will not teach us how to use it.

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If a dictator believes in a theory, it is almost impossible to change the country's policy, even if that theory fails, because no one dares to say no to the dictator. In a democracy, however, it is very easy to try something else if a theory does not work.

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Any attempt to define the character of modern society is like trying to define the color of a chameleon. The only characteristic we can be sure of is constant change.

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We stand on the threshold of heaven and hell at the same time, nervously walking up and down between the gates of one and the anteroom of the other. History has not yet decided which one we will end up in, and a series of coincidences can sway us in either direction.

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Money, social status, plastic surgeries, beautiful houses, high positions - none of these make us happy. Lasting happiness can only come from serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.

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Non-contradiction is the playground of dull minds.

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The more people believe in free will, that their feelings represent some mystical spiritual ability, the easier it is to manipulate them because they won't think their feelings are being manipulated by some external system.

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How can we distinguish what is truly biologically determined from what only people try to justify with biological myths? A useful golden rule is that "biology allows, culture forbids". Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide range of possibilities. Culture obliges people to realize certain possibilities, while forbidding them to realize other possibilities.

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Modern science is based on this Latin statement: ignoramus - "we do not know". It assumes that we don't know everything. Even more critically, it accepts that what we now think we know may turn out to be wrong as our knowledge grows. No concept, idea or theory is sacred and inviolable.

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Humanity is developing powerful new technologies that can destroy humanity, or even perfect it. The question is what we are going to do with technologies like artificial intelligence and biotechnology.

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In an autocracy, the people have no political power, so they are more easily sent to war. People don't like to kill themselves, but others do. It is easier for a dictator to send his men to war than an elected parliament.

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With the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning, it is possible to build a perfect totalitarian system that we have not seen before.

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We often see that dictatorships and autocratic regimes do not start wars for their well-conceived interests, but to divert people's attention from the country's problems.

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Europeans are living today in the most peaceful period in history. But people rarely think about peace because they think of it as a commonplace thing, not some kind of expensive, hard-earned gift.

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History does not tolerate a vacuum. If starvation, pestilence, and war are on the wane, something else must necessarily be added to humanity's to-do list. And we are advised to think very carefully about what it should be. Otherwise, even if we win a complete victory on the old battlefields, we will be completely unprepared for the new battles.

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Many thinkers, politicians, and even economists are of the opinion that GDP should be supplemented or even replaced by the value of GDH, Gross Domestic Happiness. After all, what do people want? Not to produce. They want to be happy. Production is also important because it provides the material basis of happiness. But production is only a means, not an end.

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Revolutions are usually unpredictable. The predicted revolutions do not happen because those in power prepare against them.

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Even ultranationalists are not overly willing to die for their country these days.

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Nationalism is not about hating foreigners, but about loving one's countrymen. Nationalism becomes bad when xenophobia becomes important.

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Not all evolutionary legacies are good legacies, we inherited many destructive feelings from our ancestors. We are not saints, we have to do things to improve ourselves.

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The technology of autonomous weapons and killer robots can be even more dangerous than nuclear weaponry, because in the case of nuclear weaponry, control was solely a matter of human decisions and cooperation. With artificial intelligence, we are developing a technology that is not completely controlled by humanity: this technology will be able to replace the human mind and take control from humanity in many areas of life.

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People tend to focus on the big problems of the present and not be grateful for what they and the generations before them have achieved.

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It is an iron law of history that all imagined hierarchies deny their fictional origin and assert themselves as given by nature and inescapable.

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When choosing between options, we must ask ourselves not only how we will defeat the immediate threat, but also what kind of world we will live in when the storm passes. Because yes, the storm will pass, most of us will still be alive - but we will live in a different world.

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It is crucial to remember that anger, joy, boredom and love are biological phenomena just like fever and cough. The same technology that recognizes a cough can also recognize a laugh. If companies and governments start collecting our biometric data en masse, they can get to know us much better than we know ourselves, and not only can they anticipate our feelings, but they can also manipulate them, selling us whatever they want - be it a product or politician.

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It is the responsibility of science that when it speaks to the public, it should be as understandable as possible.

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If we're willing to pay for high-quality food, clothes, and cars, why shouldn't we pay for quality information?

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You can't have answers before a discussion. Therefore, the debate must be started first.

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The currency of evolution is not starvation or pain, but copies of DNA helices. Just as the economic success of a company is measured by the number of dollars in its bank account, not the happiness of its employees, so the evolutionary success of a species is measured by the number of copies of its DNA. If there are no more DNA copies left, the species will die out, just as the company that has no more money will go bankrupt. If the species produces many DNA copies, it is a success and the species flourishes. From this point of view, 1000 copies are always better than 100. This is the essence of the agricultural revolution: the ability for more people to survive even in worse conditions.

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How many recent graduates take demanding jobs at big companies, vowing to work so hard that by the time they're 35 they'll make enough money to retire and finally do what they really care about? Then, by the time they reach that age, they have huge mortgages, send their kids to school, live in a family home that requires at least two cars per family, and feel that life is not worth living without good wine and expensive foreign vacations. What should they do, go back and dig roots? No, they redouble their efforts and continue to robotize. One of the iron laws of history is that sooner or later luxury will become a basic need, which entails new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. They start counting on him. Eventually, they reach a point where they can no longer live without it.

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It used to be a lot of work to write a letter, address and stamp an envelope, and get it to the mailbox. It took days, weeks, maybe months to get an answer. Today, I can punch up an email, send it to the other side of the world, and (if the recipient is online) get a response within a minute. I've saved a lot of time and hassle, but has my life become more peaceful? Unfortunately not. In the age of handwritten letters, people usually wrote only when they had something important to say. They didn't write down the first thing that came to their mind, but rather thought about what they wanted to say and how to say it. They expected a similarly thoughtful response. Most of them did not write or receive more than a few letters a month, and only very rarely did they feel compelled to respond to one immediately. Today, I receive dozens of emails a day from people who expect an immediate response. We thought we were saving time; instead, we cranked up the gears of life tenfold and made our days much more anxious and nervous.

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Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures stake their lives on building pyramids. Only the name, shape and size of the pyramids change from culture to culture. For example, they can take the form of a garden town house with a pool and an evergreen lawn, or a magnificent penthouse with an enviable view.

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No culture has ever bothered to forbid men from photosynthesizing, women from running faster than light, or negatively charged electrons from attracting each other. Our concepts of "natural" and "unnatural" actually do not come from biology, but from certain theological theories. The theological meaning of natural is "consistent with the purposes of God who created nature." According to Christian theologians, God created the human body, who intended each limb, each organ for a certain purpose. Using our body parts for God's intended purpose is natural behavior. Using them contrary to God's purpose is unnatural. However, evolution has no intention. Organs are indeed developed for a certain function, but once they exist, they can also adapt to other uses. Mouths, for example, evolved because the first multicellular organisms had to somehow get nutrients into their bodies. We still use our mouths for this purpose today, but we also use them for kissing, talking, and, if we're Rambo, pulling the safety pin out of a hand grenade. Are any of these unnatural just because our worm-like ancestors didn't do such things with their mouths for 600 million years?

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This is one of the most characteristic features of the science of history - the better we know a particular historical period, the more difficult it is to explain why events happened in a certain way and why they did not happen otherwise. Those who have only a superficial knowledge of an era tend to focus only on the opportunity that eventually materialized. And then they explain in hindsight why it was inevitable. Those who are more informed about the era know much better which are the paths that were not chosen then.

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The dynamics of history are not aimed at increasing human well-being. We have no reason to believe that the most successful cultures in history are also the best for Homo sapiens. Like evolution, history has no regard for the happiness of individual organisms. And human individuals are generally too ignorant and weak to shape the course of history to their advantage.

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Giving the Iranians and the Chinese better health care will help protect the Israelis and Americans from epidemics as well. This simple truth should be self-evident to everyone, but unfortunately, even among the most important people in the world, there are those who do not understand this.

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Many emergency measures planned for the short term are fixed in the long term. This is the nature of emergencies: they accelerate the flow of history.

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Until now, if your finger touched the screen of your smartphone and clicked on a link, the government wanted to know exactly what your finger clicked on. However, with the coronavirus, the subject of interest changes. The government is now interested in the temperature of your finger and the blood pressure under your skin.

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Trust that has been shattered over the years cannot be rebuilt overnight. But (...) in a crisis situation, opinions change quickly. You may have had a sour relationship with your sibling for years, but in an emergency, you both suddenly discover hidden depths of trust and understanding and rush to help each other.

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If people are told the scientific facts, and if people trust public offices to tell them these facts, citizens can do good without Big Brother looking over their shoulders. A motivated and well-informed population is usually much stronger and more effective than a controlled, indifferent population.

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If you look at the nations and countries that exist today, none of them existed five thousand years ago, and none of them will exist five thousand years from now. In the long and tumultuous history of humanity, the history of nations is a tiny chapter.

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You would have a very poor life if you could only respect the values ​​of your own nation. For example, if you could only eat Hungarian food. What is it anyway? Paprika is not Hungarian either. Árpád, István and János Hunyadi never seasoned their lunch with paprika. Before the 16th century, they didn't even know what it was here.

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What's the point of predictions if they don't change anything?

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That's why it's good to study history: not because we can predict the future with its help, but because we can get rid of the past and imagine alternative futures.

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Some fear that today we are once again facing mortal danger in the form of volcanic eruptions and asteroids. Hollywood producers make billions from these fears. In reality, however, this danger is much smaller. Mass extinctions occur every many millions of years. Yes, it is likely that a large asteroid will hit Earth in the next 100 million years, but it is unlikely that it will happen next Tuesday. We shouldn't be afraid of asteroids, but of ourselves.

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It is relatively easy to accept that money is an intersubjective reality. Most people are also happy to admit that Greek gods, evil empires, and the values ​​of foreign cultures exist only in the imagination. However, we no longer want to accept that our god, our nation and our values ​​are mere fictions, since these are the things that give meaning to our lives. We want to believe that our lives have some objective meaning and that the sacrifices we make have a purpose not just according to the stories that exist in our heads. In reality, however, most people's lives only make sense within the framework of the stories they tell each other.

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Human stupidity is one of the most important forces in history, yet we tend to ignore it.

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In our world flooded with irrelevant information, clairvoyance is power.

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People think in stories rather than facts, numbers and equations, and the simpler the story, the better.

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If mosquitoes buzz in our ears at night and disturb our sleep, we know how to exterminate them; however, if we can't sleep because of a thought buzzing in our brains, most of us are unable to eradicate it from ourselves.

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We all have a responsibility to take the time and energy to expose our biases and check our news sources.

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People are rarely satisfied with what they have. The most common reaction after achieving something is not to be satisfied, but to start wanting more. People are always looking for something better, bigger, more beautiful.

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The overreaction to terrorism (...) poses a much greater threat to our security than terrorism itself.

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A piece of bread was enough for a starving medieval peasant to be happy. But how do you make a bored, overpaid and overweight engineer happy?

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In the pursuit of health, happiness, and power, people first change one trait, then another, and another, until they are no longer human.

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No one can absorb all the scientific discoveries, no one can predict what the world economy will look like in ten years, and no one has the faintest idea where we are headed in such a rush. And since no one understands the system, no one can stop it.

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Only sapiens can flexibly cooperate with a large number of unknowns. This specific ability - not an immortal soul or some unique kind of consciousness - is the explanation for our conquest of the planet called Earth.

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After 4 billion years of wandering the land of organic ingredients, life bursts forth into the wasteland of the inorganic realm, taking on forms we would never have imagined in our wildest dreams. After all, even our wildest dreams are products of organic chemistry.

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In the 18th century, Queen Marie Antoinette of France is said to have advised the starving masses that if they had no bread, they should eat cake. Today's poor follow this suggestion word for word. While the wealthy residents of Beverly Hills eat steamed tofu with lettuce and quinoa, the poor in the slums and ghettos stuff themselves with crackers, chips, hamburgers, and pizza.

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For the first time in history, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; old age kills more people than infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals combined. In the early 21st century, the average person's death is much more likely to be caused by binge eating at McDonald's than by drought, Ebola or an attack by al-Qaeda.

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The brain's retrieval system is amazingly efficient, except when we're trying to remember where we put our lock key.

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Many kingdoms and empires were in fact little more than large mafias taking defense money. The king was the godfather who collected the money, and in return he made sure that neighboring criminal organizations and smaller local gangs could not harm those under his protection.

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Millions of years of evolution have shaped us to live and think as members of a community. And in just 2 centuries we have become alienated individuals! Nothing better demonstrates the amazing power of culture.

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Psychologically, happiness depends much more on expectations than on objective circumstances. We will not be satisfied if we live in peace and abundance, but if reality meets our expectations. The bad news is that as conditions improve, our expectations soar. And the dramatic improvement in conditions that we have experienced in recent decades leads to greater expectations rather than greater satisfaction.

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If we tear down the walls of our prison and run towards freedom, we are really only entering the wider yard of a bigger prison.

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Every point in history is a crossroads. A single road leads from the past to the present, but many paths branch off towards the future. Some trails are wider, smoother, and better marked, so we're more likely to start on them. However, history and the people who make history can take unexpected turns.

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We study history not to learn about the future, but to broaden our horizons, to understand that our current situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and therefore we have more possibilities than we can imagine.

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No one has ever been happier than winning the lottery, buying a new house, being promoted, or even finding true love. One thing, and one thing only, makes people happy - the pleasant feeling in their body. A person who has won the lottery or found love and is now jumping for joy is not really reacting to money or a loved one. It reacts directly to the fact that different hormones are raging in your blood, and a real storm of electrical signals is zigzagging between different parts of your brain.

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Terrorists are like flies in a china shop. No matter how hard the fly tries to crush, it's so weak that it can't even knock over a teacup. So he finds an elephant, gets into its ear and starts humming. The elephant goes wild with fear and anger and overruns the china shop.

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The human community knows much more today than the prehistoric hordes did. On an individual level, however, the ancient collectors were the most cultured and educated people of all time.

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Biological reality is not black and white. There are also very important gray areas.

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It is easy to accept that the division of people into "superior" and "ordinary" is just a figment of the imagination. But it is also a myth that all people are equal. In what sense are people equal? Is there an objective reality outside of human imagination in which we are really equal?

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Like equality, rights and limited liability companies, freedom is something that people have invented and exists only in their imaginations. From a biological point of view, it means nothing that people are free in democratic societies and not in dictatorships.

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Often a single priest can do the work of a hundred soldiers - much more cheaply and efficiently.

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People pursue wealth and power, acquire knowledge and property, beget sons and daughters, build houses and palaces. But no matter what they achieve, they are not satisfied. Those who live in poverty dream of wealth. He who has a million wants two. He who has two, ten. Even the rich and famous are rarely satisfied. They too are constantly haunted by worries and fears, until illness, old age and death bring them the bitter end. Everything that man has accumulated disappears like smoke. Life is a meaningless rush in the squirrel's wheel.

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That's how history works. People weave a web of reason and believe in it from the bottom of their hearts, but sooner or later the web unravels, and looking back we no longer understand how anyone could have taken this seriously. With today's intelligence, crusading in the hope of salvation seems crazy. The Cold War is even more insane. How could people risk nuclear holocaust a few decades ago just because they believed in a communist heaven? And maybe a hundred years from now, our belief in democracy and human rights will be just as incomprehensible to our descendants.