Yuval Noah Harari (b.1976) is an Israeli historian. A professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an illustrious author, his works explore free will, consciousness, intelligence, and happiness.
Born in Kiryat Ata, Haifa District, to a secular Jewish family with Eastern European and Lebanese roots, Harari studied medieval history and military history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1998) and earned a PhD degree at Jesus College, Oxford (2002.)
Harare lives with his husband, Itzik Yahav, in a cooperative agricultural community near Jerusalem. A pupil of the Burmese Indian meditation teacher S. N. Goenka, Harari practices Vipassanā meditation for two hours each day and leaves on an annual meditation retreat of 30 days or longer.
Harari is the author of two popular science bestsellers: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2014,) which investigated the development of early human history, and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, which speculated on where we may be heading as a post-human species. His latest book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018,) explores the difficulties that confront us.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Yuval Noah Harari
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.
—Yuval Noah Harari
Hierarchies serve an important function. They enable complete strangers to know how to treat one another without wasting the time and energy needed to become personally acquainted.
—Yuval Noah Harari
Happiness does not really depend on objective conditions of either wealth, health or even community. Rather, it depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations.
—Yuval Noah Harari
It is an iron rule of history that what looks inevitable in hindsight was far from obvious at the time.
—Yuval Noah Harari
Nothing should be taken for granted, even if everybody believes it.
—Yuval Noah Harari
You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.
—Yuval Noah Harari
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