Humankind: A Hopeful History Quotes
"An idea that’s long been known to make rulers nervous. An idea denied by religions and ideologies, ignored by the news media and erased from the annals of world history."
"That most people, deep down, are pretty decent."
"The truth is, in almost every case, we live on Planet A."
"They don’t know. Not freshman or juniors or grad students, not professionals in most cases, not even emergency responders."
"It’s when crisis hits–when the bombs fall or the floodwaters rise–that we humans become our best selves."
"The overwhelming majority of the emergent activity was prosocial in nature."
"Our belief becomes what sociologists dub a self-fulfilling prophecy."
"We are what we believe. We find what we go looking for. And what we predict, comes to pass."
"The real Lord of the Flies is a story of friendship and loyalty."
"‘There’s a fight going on inside me. It’s a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil–angry, greedy, jealous, arrogant, and cowardly. The other is good–peaceful, loving, modest, generous, honest, and trustworthy. These two wolves are also fighting within you, and inside every other person too.’"
"The time has come for a new view of human nature. It’s time for a new realism. It’s time for a new view of humankind."
"‘This is the true story of seven strangers ……… Find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real.’"
"People who follow the news are more likely to agree with statements such as ‘Most people care only about themselves.’"
"We’re born to learn, to bond and to play."
"Language is an excellent example of a system that Copycats might not think up themselves but can learn from one another."
"If you want a clever fox, you don’t select for cleverness. You select for friendliness."
"Humans, it turns out, are anything but poker-faced. We constantly leak emotions and are hardwired to relate to the people around us."
"What makes human beings unique? Why do we build museums, while the Neanderthals are stuck in the displays?"
"Human beings, it turns out, are ultrasocial learning machines."
"The result was a Hobbesian business culture with cut-throat competition between employees."
"‘It is a Hobbesian universe,’ journalist Joris Luyendijk said of London’s financial services sector in the aftermath of the 2008 credit crisis."
"Every first-year biology student now learns that cooperation is much more critical."
"Our distant ancestors knew the importance of the collective and rarely idolised individuals."
"Is it any wonder, then, that loneliness can quite literally make us sick?"
"Human beings crave togetherness and interaction."
"‘The mechanism that makes us the kindest species,’ says Brian Hare, ‘also makes us the cruelest species on the planet.’"
"We feel more affinity for those who are most like us."
"Oxytocin doesn’t fuel universal fraternity. It powers feelings of ‘my people first’."
"Maybe Thomas Hobbes was right after all."
"We started off nasty," Pinker concurs with Hobbes."
"Most people, he wrote, have a ‘fear of aggression’ that is a normal part of our ‘emotional make-up’."
"‘Humans are hardwired for ……… solidarity; and this is what makes violence so difficult,’ Collins asserts."
"The life and times of our ancestors as ‘nasty, brutish and short’, but a truer description would have been friendly, peaceful and healthy."
"The very things we hold up today as ‘milestones of civilization’, such as the invention of money, the development of writing, or the birth of legal institutions, started out as instruments of oppression."
"Only in the final fifteen minutes would civil society start to look like a good idea."
"Set Easter Island and Planet Earth side by side and there are some disturbing parallels."
"I ran to help. It seemed the natural thing to do."
"It would have made such a difference to my family, knowing that Kitty died in the arms of her friend."
"So why did Meenan keep this to himself? Self-preservation."
"It’s shocking how little of the original story holds up."
"That’s right, Kitty’s murderer was apprehended thanks to the intervention of two bystanders."
"It’s a story that ought to be required reading not only for first-year psychology students, but also for aspiring journalists."
"Morris wasn’t being sent into combat with a helmet and rifle, but wielding pen and paper."
"Ideology. Love of one’s country, for example, or faith in one’s chosen party."
"Psychologically, physiologically, neurologically – they must be every kind of screwed up."
"They’re also like us, experts emphasize."
"What we find over and over again is that babies will choose the individual who is actually mean to the one who had the different opinion to themselves."
"Even before we learn to speak, we seem to have an aversion to the unfamiliar."
"Fortunately, by the time we reach eighteen months, humans are a good deal smarter and therefore easier to study."
"‘Time and again,’ one sociologist noted in surprise, ‘we encountered instances when a man failed to act in accordance with his own self-interests.'"
"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him."
"‘It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave: though at the same time, it appears somewhat strange, that a maxim should be true in politics, which is false in fact.’"
"Time and again, we assume that others care only about themselves. That, unless there’s a reward in the offing, people much prefer to lounge around."
"Simply believing in something can make it come true."
"How you get paid for what you do can turn you into an entirely different person."
"A major study among 230,000 people across 142 countries revealed that a mere 13 per cent actually feel ‘engaged’ at work."
"The gap between the people at the top and the folks doing the actual work–in healthcare, in education, you name it–is enormous."
"There’s this notion that doers can’t think strategically, that they lack vision."
"In my experience, managers tend to have very few ideas."
"What you get with all these MBA programmes is people convinced they’ve learned a convenient way to order the world."
"Subtract management and the work continues as before–or even better."
"Buurtzorg is better for patients, nicer for employees and cheaper for taxpayers."
"Edward Deci, the American psychologist who flipped the script on how we think about motivation, thought the question should no longer be how to motivate others, but how we shape a society so that people motivate themselves."
"Everywhere you look, children’s freedom is being limited."
"Play is not subject to fixed rules and regulations, but is open-ended and unfettered."
"Unstructured play is also nature’s remedy against boredom."
"The instinct to play is rooted deep in our nature."
"Everything we call ‘culture,’ said Huizinga, originates in play."
"For children, the dawn of civilisation brought the yoke of mind-numbing farm labour."
"Good citizenship had to be drilled into people from an early age."
"Now, children had to learn to read and write, to design and organise so that they could pay their own way when they were adults."
"In the late nineteenth century did children once again have more time to play."
"Granted, we’re a lot less strict with kids today than we were a hundred years ago, and schools are no longer the prisons they resembled in the nineteenth century."
"A new generation is coming up that’s internalising the rules of our achievement-based society."
"A generation less inclined to colour outside the lines, less inclined to dream or to dare, to fantasise or explore."
"The opposite of play is not work, the opposite of play is depression."
"Children learn best when left to their own devices, in a community bringing together all ages and abilities and supported by coaches and play leaders."
"Democracies around the globe are afflicted by at least seven plagues."
"Participatory budgeting actually makes people more willing to pay taxes."
"In Porto Alegre, citizens even asked for higher taxes."
"The simpler the billing, the greater the emphasis on actual care."
"The more complicated the billing, the more players will search for loopholes in the system."
"The question is not: can our kids handle the freedom? The question is: do we have the courage to give it to them?"
"Our biggest shortfall isn’t in a bank account or budget sheet, but inside ourselves. It’s a shortage of what makes life meaningful. A shortage of play."
"So why are we so blind to our own communism? Maybe it’s because the things we share don’t seem all that remarkable."
"The things we share are known as the commons."
"Could we go back to a society with more room for freedom and creativity?"
"Could we build playgrounds and design schools that don’t constrain but, rather, unchain our need to play?"
"The broken windows theory sends the message that order is not being enforced, signalling to criminals that they can go even further."
"Life in many institutions is at best barren and futile, at worst unspeakably brutal and degrading."
"The conditions in which they [inmates] live are the poorest possible preparation for their successful reentry into society, and often merely reinforce in them a pattern of manipulation or destructiveness."
"We were religious about it." - Subway director on graffiti cleanup efforts in 1980s New York City.
"Public order is a fragile thing." - James Wilson, 2011.
"If Christmas can come to the jungle, you can come home. Demobilise. At Christmas, everything is possible." - Message on Colombian guerrilla warfare Christmas trees.
"Before you were a guerrilla, you were my child." - Colombian mothers' message to their children in FARC.
"Generosity makes me stronger. And it makes my men feel stronger, too." - Colombian army officer.