Yuval Noah Harari
Thursday, December 10th, 2020Quotes from “Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind,”
by Yuval Noah Harari
pgs. 22-23: “Our language evolved as a way of gossiping.
According to this theory Homo sapiens is primarily a social animal.
Social cooperation is our key for survival and reproduction.
It is not enough for individual men and women to know the
whereabouts of lions and bison. It’s much more important for them
to know who in the band hates whom, who is sleeping with whom,
who is honest, and who is a cheat.”
pg. 24: “It is relatively easy to agree that only Homo sapiens can
speak about things that don’t really exist, and believe six
impossible things before breakfast. You could never convince a
monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless
bananas after death in monkey heaven.”