When you inflict suffering on yourself in the name of some story, it give you a choice: 'Either the story is true, or I am a gullible fool.' When you… - Yuval Noah Harari

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When you inflict suffering on yourself in the name of some story, it give you a choice: 'Either the story is true, or I am a gullible fool.' When you inflict suffering on others, you are also given a choice: 'Either the story is true, or I am a cruel villain.' And just as we don't want to admit we are fools, we also don't want to admit we are villains, so we prefer to believe that the story is true.

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About Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari (Hebrew: יובל נח הררי; born 24 February 1976) is an Israeli professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Native Name: יובל נח הררי
Alternative Names: Yuval N. Harari

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Additional quotes by Yuval Noah Harari

Not visiting any temples and not believing in any god is also a viable option. As the last few centuries have proved, we don’t need to invoke God’s name in order to live a moral life. Secularism can provide us with all the values we need.

At present, people are happy to give away their most valuable asset — their personal data — in exchange for free email services and funny cat videos. It’s a bit like African and Native American tribes who unwittingly sold entire countries to European imperialists in exchange for colorful beads and cheap trinkets.

Gautama's insight was that no matter what the mind experiences, it usually reacts with craving, and craving always involves dissatisfaction. When the mind experiences something distasteful it craves to be rid of the irritation. When the mind experiences something pleasant, it craves that the pleasure will remain and will intensify. Therefore, the mind is always dissatisfied and restless. This is very clear when we experience unpleasant things, such as pain. As long as the pain continues, we are dissatisfied and do all we can to avoid it. Yet even when we experience pleasant things we are never content. We either fear that the pleasure might disappear, or we hope that it will intensify.

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