Javed Khan

“I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“It should be stressed that the creation of the Jesus story was not a deliberate lie. People like Saint Paul, Tertullian, Saint Augustine and Martin Luther didn’t set out to deceive anyone. They projected their deeply felt hopes and feelings on the figure of Jesus, in the same way that all of us routinely project our feelings on our parents, lovers and leaders. While branding campaigns are occasionally a cynical exercise of disinformation, most of the really big stories of history have been the result of emotional projections and wishful thinking. True believers play a key role in the rise of every major religion and ideology, and the Jesus story changed history because it gained an immense number of true believers.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“ka((be me;N jaa rahaa to nah do :ta((nah kyaa kahii;N bhuulaa huu;N ;haqq-e .su;hbat-e ahl-e kunisht ko 1) if I went and stayed in the Ka'bah, then don’t taunt me! in any way, ever, 2) have I forgotten the right/claim of the companionship of the people of the fire-temple?”
― Anonymous

“How many pizzas can you purchase for a dollar, or for a bitcoin? In 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins. It was the first known commercial transaction involving bitcoin – and with hindsight, also the most expensive pizza ever. By November 2021, a single bitcoin was valued at more than $69,000, so the bitcoins Hanyecz paid for his two pizzas were worth $690 million, enough to purchase millions of pizzas.14 While the caloric value of pizza is an objective reality that remained the same between 2010 and 2021, the financial value of bitcoin is an intersubjective reality that changed dramatically during the same period, depending on the stories people told and believed about bitcoin.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI