“One of history’s few iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations.”—Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
“If things continue at the present pace, it is likely that whales, sharks, tuna and dolphins will follow the diprotodons, ground sloths and mammoths to oblivion. Among all the world’s large creatures, the only survivors of the human flood will be humans themselves, and the farmyard animals that serve as galley slaves in Noah’s Ark.”—Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
“There is no chance that gravity will cease to function tomorrow, even if people stop believing in it. In contrast, an imagined order is always in danger of collapse, because it depends upon myths, and myths vanish once people stop believing in them.”—Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
“Trade cannot exist without trust, and it is very difficult to trust strangers. The global trade network of today is based on our trust in such fictional entities as the dollar, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the totemic trademarks of corporations. When two strangers in a tribal society want to trade, they will often establish trust by appealing to a common god, mythical ancestor or totem animal.”—Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
“The Stone Age should more accurately be called the Wood Age, because most of the tools used by ancient hunter-gatherers were made of wood.”—Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari