
Humankind: A Hopeful History

I’m often reminded of what a Chinese politician said in the 1970s when asked about the effects of the French Revolution of 1789. ‘It’s a little too soon to say,’ he allegedly responded.62
Rutger Bregman • Humankind: A Hopeful History
Vaccines now save more lives each year than would have been spared if we’d had world peace for the entire twentieth century.
Rutger Bregman • Humankind: A Hopeful History
If there’s one lesson to be drawn from the nocebo effect, it’s that ideas are never merely ideas. We are what we believe. We find what we go looking for. And what we predict, comes to pass.
Rutger Bregman • Humankind: A Hopeful History
Rather than a struggle for survival, it was a snuggle for survival, in which we kept each other warm.21
Rutger Bregman • Humankind: A Hopeful History
Crisis brought out not the worst, but the best in people.
Rutger Bregman • Humankind: A Hopeful History
Peter returned to Sydney, resigned from his father’s company and commissioned a new ship. Then he had the six boys brought over and granted them the thing that had started it all: an opportunity to see the world beyond Tonga. He hired Sione, Fatai, Kolo, Tevita, Luke and Mano as the crew of his new fishing boat. The name of the boat? The Ata.
Rutger Bregman • Humankind: A Hopeful History
An old man says to his grandson: ‘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.’ After a
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It’s time we told a different kind of story.
Rutger Bregman • Humankind: A Hopeful History
‘My own impression,’ writes Rebecca Solnit, whose book A Paradise Built in Hell (2009) gives a masterful account of Katrina’s aftermath, ‘is that elite panic comes from powerful people who see all humanity in their own image.’14 Dictators and despots, governors and generals – they all too often resort to brute force to prevent scenarios that exist
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