Sam Harris Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transcends cultural, national, and political boundaries. You don't have American science versus Canadian science versus Japanese science.

  Sam Harris

  Thinking, Political, Way

  "Print: Atheism's Poster Boy Sam Harris on the Science of Morality". Interview with Olivia Koski, www.wired.com. November 29, 2010.

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• The habit of spending nearly every waking moment lost in thought leaves us at the mercy of whatever our thoughts happen to be. Meditation is a way of breaking this spell.

  Sam Harris

  Meditation, Way, Waking

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• Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle.

  Sam Harris

  Philosophy, Views, Atheism

  "Letter to a Christian Nation". Book by Sam Harris, p. 51, September 19, 2006.

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• Our world is fast succumbing to the activities of men and women who would stake the future of our species on beliefs that should not survive an elementary school education.

  Sam Harris

  School, Men, Our World

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain -- from cosmology to psychology to economics -- has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture. Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music.

  Sam Harris

  Book, Our World, Self

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• Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person's thoughts.

  Sam Harris

  Loneliness, Thinking, Like Love

  "Drugs and the Meaning of Life" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 6, 2011.

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  How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware? We can’t.

  Sam Harris

  Brain, Events, Agents

  Sam Harris (2012). “Free Will”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

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• Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Atheist, Ignorance

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.21, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.

  Sam Harris

  Thinking, Causes, Intention

  Sam Harris (2012). “Free Will”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we will kill you.

  Sam Harris

  Community, Islam, Faces

  "Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks". www.huffingtonpost.com. May 05, 2008.

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• We do not know what awaits each of us after death, but we know that we will die. Clearly, it must be possible to live ethically-with a genuine concern for the happiness of other sentient beings-without presuming to know things about which we are patently ignorant. Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person you will pass in the street today, is going to die. Living long enough, each will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?

  Sam Harris

  Death, Loss, Genuine Concern

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• This is the true horror of religion. It allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions, what only lunatics could believe on their own.

  Sam Harris

  Believe, People, Religion

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• It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available.

  Sam Harris

  Helping Others, Thinking, People

  "Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival" symposium, November 2006.

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• Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral - that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more "moral" energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year. (25)

  Sam Harris

  Christian, Fighting, Condom Use

  Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.

  Sam Harris

  Atheist, War, Two

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• Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. What if someone says, “Well, that’s not how I choose to think about water.”? All we can do is appeal to scientific values. And if he doesn’t share those values, the conversation is over. If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?

  Sam Harris

  Thinking, Oxygen, Logical Arguments

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• I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

  Sam Harris

  Faith, People, Support

  Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us.

  Sam Harris

  World, Way, Facts

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.48, W. W. Norton & Company

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• People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power.

  Sam Harris

  Strong, Atheist, People

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.225, W. W. Norton & Company

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• You almost never get the pleasure of seeing that you won the argument in real time. People just don't like to publicly change their minds. They change their minds in private.

  Sam Harris

  Real, People, Mind

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• We are all prisoners of our thoughts.

  Sam Harris

  Prisoner, Our Thoughts

  Sam Harris (2014). “Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

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• Unlike statements of fact, which require no further work on our part, lies must be continually protected from collisions with reality.

  Sam Harris

  Lying, Reality, Facts

  Sam Harris (2013). “Lying”, p.33, Four Elephants Press

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• When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. Religion is one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies.

  Sam Harris

  Integrity, Logical Arguments, People

  Sam Harris (2006). “Letter to a Christian Nation”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• We do not respect people's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons. If my reasons are good enough for believing what I believe, you will helplessly believe what I believe. I will give you my reasons and reasons are contagious. That is what it is to be a rational human being.

  Sam Harris

  Believe, People, Giving

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• 120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer.

  Sam Harris

  Beer, Years, Religion

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.17, W. W. Norton & Company

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