Top 500 Yuval Noah Harari Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “An algorithm is a methodical set of steps that can be used to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions. An algorithm isn’t a particular calculation, but the method followed when making the calculation.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

102. “Do we enter the immigration debate with the assumption that all cultures are inherently equal, or do we think that some cultures might well be superior to others?”

— Yuval Noah Harari

103. “The only thing we can try to do is to influence the direction scientists are taking. Since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, perhaps the real questions facing us is not ‘What do we want to become?‘, but “What do we want to want?’ Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven’t given it enough thought.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

104. “If data becomes concentrated in too few hands, humankind will split into different species.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

105. “So why study history? Unlike physics or economics, history is not a means for making accurate predictions. We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we can imagine.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

106. “Ideas change the world only when they change our behaviour.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

107. “Have we officially entered the post-truth era?”

— Yuval Noah Harari

108. “They were too familiar to ignore, but too different to tolerate.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

109. “On the psychological level, happiness depends on expectations rather than objective conditions. We don’t become satisfied by leading a peaceful and prosperous existence. Rather, we become satisfied when reality matches our expectations. The bad news is that as conditions improve, expectations balloon. Dramatic improvements in conditions, as humankind has experienced in recent decades, translate into greater expectations rather than greater contentment.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

110. “Una de las pocas leyes rigurosas de la historia es que los lujos tienden a convertirse en necesidades y a generar nuevas obligaciones.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

111. “A good rule of thumb is ‘Biology enables, culture forbids.’ Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It’s culture that obliges people to realise some possibilities while forbidding others.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

112. “Many pedagogical experts argue that schools should switch to teaching “the four Cs” – critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

113. “Money is accordingly a system of mutual trust, and not just any system of mutual trust: money is the most universal and most efficient system of mutual trust ever devised.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

114. “The real difference between us and chimpanzees is the mythical glue that binds together large numbers of individuals, families and groups.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

115. “Sapiens can cooperate in extremely flexible ways with countless numbers of strangers. That’s why Sapiens rule the world, whereas ants eat our leftovers and chimps are locked up in zoos and research laboratories.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

116. “In the end it was communism that collapsed. The supermarket proved to be far stronger than the gulag.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

117. “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.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

118. “You may not agree with the idea that organisms are algorithms, and that giraffes, tomatoes and human beings are just different methods for processing data. But you should know that this is current scientific dogma, and it is changing our world beyond recognition.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

119. “Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, there hasn’t been a single natural way of life for Sapiens. There are only cultural choices, from among a bewildering palette of possibilities.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

120. “The danger is that if we invest too much in developing AI and too little in developing human consciousness, the very sophisticated artificial intelligence of computers might only serve to empower the natural stupidity of humans.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

121. “Referendums and elections are always about human feelings, not about human rationality.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

122. “In ancient times having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

123. “By 2050, not only the idea of a job for life but even that of a profession for life might seem antediluvian.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

124. “This ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

125. “Identity is defined by conflicts and dilemmas more than by agreement.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

126. “If we accept a mere tenth of what animal-rights activists are claiming, then modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history. When.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

127. “Unlike nuclear war – which is a future potential – climate change is a present reality.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

128. “The deeper the mysteries of the universe, the less likely it is that whatever is responsible for them gives a damn about female dress codes or human sexual behavior.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

129. “Suffering is not an objective condition in the outside world. It is a mental reaction generated by my own mind.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

130. “Religion can thus be defined as a system of human norms and values that is founded on a belief in a superhuman order.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

131. “Philosophers are very patient people, but engineers are far less patient, and investors are the least patient of all.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

132. “First, if you want reliable information, pay good money for it. If you get your news for free, you might well be the product.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

133. “Technology has changed everything by creating a set of global existential threats that no nation can solve on its own.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

134. “The heated debates about Homo sapiens’ ‘natural way of life’ miss the main point. Ever since the Cognitive Revolution, there hasn’t been a single natural way of life for Sapiens. There are only cultural choices, from among a bewildering palette of possibilities.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

135. “The family was also the welfare system, the health system, the education system, the construction industry, the trade union, the pension fund, the insurance company, the radio, the television, the newspapers, the bank and even the police.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

136. “Homo sapiens is just not built for satisfaction. Human happiness depends less on objective condition and more on our own expectations. Expectations, however, tend to adapt to conditions, including to the condition of other people. When things improve, expectations balloon, and consequently even dramatic improvement in conditions might leave us as dissatisfied as before.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

137. “Feelings are thus not the opposite of rationality – they embody evolutionary rationality.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

138. “Trust is the raw material from which all types of money are minted.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

139. “The Cognitive Revolution is accordingly the point when history declared its independence from biology.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

140. “Once politicians can press our emotional buttons directly, generating anxiety, hatred, joy, and boredom at will, politics will become a mere emotional circus.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

141. “If, however, you want to retain some control of your personal existence and of the future of life, you have to run faster than the algorithms, faster than Amazon and the government, and get to know yourself before they do. To run fast, don’t take much luggage with you. Leave all your illusions behind. They are very heavy.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

142. “Big Data algorithms might create digital dictatorships in which all power is concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite while most people suffer not from exploitation, but from something far worse – irrelevance.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

143. “Alamogordo, 16 July 1945, 05:29:53. Eight seconds after the first atomic bomb was detonated. The nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer, upon seeing the explosion, quoted from the Bhagavad Gita: ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

144. “According to the Buddha, then, life has no meaning, and people don’t need to create any meaning. They just need to realise that there is no meaning, and thus be liberated from the suffering caused by our attachments and our identification with empty phenomena.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

145. “The shifting of authority from humans to algorithms is happening all around us, not as a result of some momentous governmental decision, but due to a flood of mundane personal choices.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

146. “No investigation of our divine future can ignore our own animal past, or our relations with other animals – because the relationship between humans and animals is the best model we have for future relations between superhumans and humans. You.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

147. “If you want to go deeply into any subject, you need a lot of time, and in particular you need the privilege of wasting time. You need to experiment with unproductive paths, explore dead ends, make space for doubts and boredom, and allow little seeds of insight to slowly grow and blossom. If you cannot afford to waste time, you will never find the truth.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

148. “If you suffer because of your belief in God or in the nation, that does not prove that your beliefs are true. Maybe you are just paying the price of your gullibility. However, most people don’t like to admit that they are fools. Consequently, the more they sacrifice for a particular belief, the stronger their faith becomes.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

149. “Two particularly important nonhuman abilities that AI possesses are connectivity and updatability.”

— Yuval Noah Harari

150. “The algorithms controlling humans work through sensations, emotions and thoughts.”

— Yuval Noah Harari