Join 📚 Hadar's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what Hadar's read, .
whereas religion asks us to believe in something, money asks us to believe that other people believe in something.
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
More than four decades later, in her last moments, Ye Wenjie would recall the influence Silent Spring had on her life. The book dealt only with a limited subject: the negative environmental effects of excessive pesticide use. But the perspective taken by the author shook Ye to the core. The use of pesticides had seemed to Ye just a normal, proper—or, at least, neutral—act, but Carson’s book allowed Ye to see that, from Nature’s perspective, their use was indistinguishable from the Cultural Revolution, and equally destructive to our world. If this was so, then how many other acts of humankind that had seemed normal or even righteous were, in reality, evil? As she continued to mull over these thoughts, a deduction made her shudder: Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean.… It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race. This thought determined the entire direction of Ye’s life.
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu and Ken Liu
INTERROGATOR: Do you understand Trisolaran civilization? YE WENJIE: No. We received only very limited information. No one has real, detailed knowledge of Trisolaran civilization except Mike Evans and other core members of the Adventists who intercepted their messages. INTERROGATOR: Then why do you have such hope for it, thinking that it can reform and perfect human society? YE: If they can cross the distance between the stars to come to our world, their science must have developed to a very advanced stage. A society with such advanced science must also have more advanced moral standards. INTERROGATOR: Do you think this conclusion you drew is scientific? YE:… INTERROGATOR: Let me presume to guess: Your father was deeply influenced by your grandfather’s belief that only science could save China. And you were deeply influenced by your father. YE: (sighing quietly) I don’t know.
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu and Ken Liu
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise