67 quotes found
“the crucial factor in ourconquest of the world was our ability to connect many humans to one another.”
“Famine, plague and war will probably continue to claim millions of victims in the coming decades. Yet they are no longer unavoidable tragedies beyond the understanding and control of a helpless hum...”
“Consistency is the playground of dull minds”
“Why is English so widespread today, and not Danish?”
“Rather, when famine, plague or war break out of our control, we feel that somebody must have screwed up, we set up a commission of inquiry, and promise ourselves that next time well do better.”
“Patriarchy has been the normal in almost all agricultural and industrial societies. ...If patriarchy in Afro-Asia resulted from some chance occurrence, why were the Aztecs and Incas patriarchal? It...”
“How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is Biology enables, Culture forbids. Biology is willing ...”
“If Kindle is upgraded with face recognition and biometric sensors, it can know what made you laugh, what made you sad and what made you angry. Soon, books will read you while you are reading them.”
“There are no gods, no nations, no money and no human rights, except in our collective imagination.”
“When humans began cultivating the land, they thought that the extra work this required will pay off. 'Yes, we will have to work harder. But the harvest will be so bountiful! We won't have to worry ...”
“Buddhism does not deny the existence of godsthey are described as powerful beings who can bring rains and victoriesbut they have no influence on the law that suffering arises from craving. If the m...”
“Sapiens dont behave according to a cold mathematical logic, but rather according to a warm social logic. We are ruled by emotions.”
“The currency of evolution is neither hunger nor pain, but rather copies of DNA helixes”
“As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our act...”
“Many call this process 'the destruction of nature.' But it's not really destruction, it's change. Nature cannot be destroyed.”
“science says that nobody is ever made happy by getting a promotion, winning the lottery or even finding true love. People are made happy by one thing and one thing only - pleasant sensations in the...”
“Romantic literature often presents the individual as somebody caught in a struggle against the state and the market. Nothing could be further from the truth. The state and the market are the mother...”
“Paradise, the capitalists promise, is right around the corner. True, mistakes have been made such as the Atlantic slave trade and the exploitation of the European working class, but we have learned...”
“This is the fly in the ointment of free-market capitalism. It cannot ensure that profits are gained in a fair way, or distributed in a fair manner. On the contrary, the craving to increase profits ...”
“In the 300 years of the crucifixion of Christ to the conversion of Emperor Constantine, polytheistic Roman emperors initiated no more than four general persecutions of Christians. Local administrat...”
