Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Quotes

“The vast majority of human communication – whether in the form of emails, phone calls or newspaper columns – is gossip. It comes so naturally to us that it seems as if our language evolved for this very purpose.”

“Of course the tigers sometimes caught them, or a snake bit them, but on the other hand they didn’t have to deal with automobile accidents and industrial pollution.”

“The human collective knows far more today than did the ancient bands. But at the individual level, ancient foragers were the most knowledgeable and skilful people in history.”

“The foragers’ secret of success, which protected them from starvation and malnutrition, was their varied diet.”

“‘Happiness Begins Within.’ Money, social status, plastic surgery, beautiful houses, powerful positions – none of these will bring you happiness.”

“The world does not revolve around humans or around any other particular group of beings.”

“Consumerism has worked very hard, with the help of popular psychology (‘Just do it!’) to convince people that indulgence is good for you, whereas frugality is self-oppression.”

“Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally they reach a point where they can’t live without it.”

“The world of thought, belief and feeling is by definition far more difficult to decipher.”

“Whereas chimpanzees spend five hours a day chewing raw food, a single hour suffices for people eating cooked food.”

“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 imagine.”

“There can actually be richness in the sadness. If you experience joy without craving that the joy linger and intensify, you continue to feel joy without losing your peace of mind.”

“Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can.”

“When we break down our prison walls and run towards freedom, we are in fact running into the more spacious exercise yard of a bigger prison.”

“Don’t believe tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature.”

“You need to know a lot about your own tiny field of expertise, but for the vast majority of life’s necessities you rely blindly on the help of other experts, whose own knowledge is also limited to a tiny field of expertise.”

“Giving up the nomadic lifestyle enabled women to have a child every year.”

“Walking upright has its downside. The skeleton of our primate ancestors developed . . . to support a creature that walked on all fours and had a relatively small head. Adjusting to an upright position was quite a challenge, especially when the scaffolding had to support an extra-large cranium.”

“We have mastered our surroundings, increased food production, built cities, established empires and created far-flung trade networks. But did we decrease the amount of suffering in the world?”

“Long before the Industrial Revolution, Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology.”