Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Yuval Noah Harari

Quote by Yuval Noah Harari

“When the Spaniards first arrived in Mexico, natives bearing incense burners were assigned to accompany them wherever they went. The Spaniards thought it was a mark of divine honour. We know from native sources that they found the newcomers’ smell unbearable.”

Quote by Yuval Noah Harari

Work

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Yuval Noah Harari

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Yuval Noah Harari. more

You May Also Like

“You haven't won an argument if you've lost the person; the loudest voice in the room is usually the weakest mind.”

“Indians abroad tend to stick together. They join Indian clubs, regularly visit mosques, temples and gurdwaras and eat Indian food at home or in Indian restaurants. Very rarely do they mix with the English on the same terms as they do with their own countrymen. This kind of island-ghetto existence feeds on stereotypes - the English are very reserved; they do not invite outsiders to their homes because they regard their homes as their castles; English women are frigid, etc. I discovered that none of this was true. In the years that followed, I made closer friends with English men and women than I did with Indians. I lived in dozens of English homes and shared their family problems. And I discovered to my delight that nothing was further from the truth that the canard that English women are frigid.”

“But the artistic program of the Counter Reformation, the propagation of Catholicism through the medium of art among the braod masses of the population, is frist accomplished by the baroque. It is obvious that what was in the mind of the Council of Trent was not an art which, like mannerism, appealed merely to a thin stratum of intellectuals, but a people's art, such as the baroque in fact became. At the time time of the Council, mannerism was the most widespread and the most live form of art, but it in no way represented the particular direction which was best calculated to solve the artistic problems of the Counter Reformation. The fact that it had to yield to the baroque is to be explained, above all, by its inability to master the ecclesiastical tasks committed to art by the Counter Reformation.”

“They were torn by force, on the one hand, and by freedom, on the other, and stood defenseless against the chaos that threatened to destroy the whole order of the intellectual world. In them we encounter for the first time the modern artist with his inward strife, his zest for life and his escapism, his traditionalism and his rebelliousness, his exhibitionistc subjectivism and the reserve with which he tries to hold back the ultimate secret of his personality. From now on the number of cranks, eccentrics, and psychopaths among the artists increases from day to day.”