Sam Harris Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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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• Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being. Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept.

  Sam Harris

  Our World, Abuse, Might

  "Letter to a Christian Nation". Book by Sam Harris, p. 23, 2006.

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  As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population.

  Sam Harris

  Atheist, Offending, Population

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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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• 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 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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• 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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• 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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• The problem is not that religious people are stupid. It's not that religious fundamentalists are stupid. I happen to think that you can be so well educated that you can build a nuclear bomb, and still get--and still believe that you will get the 72 virgins in paradise--that is the problem. The problem is that--religion--because it has been sheltered from criticism as it has been--allows people--perfectly sane, perfectly intelligent people--to believe en masse, what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Stupid, Believe

  38 Copy quote

• A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying.

  Sam Harris

  Running, Country, Believe

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• When someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust, because he visits suffering on innocent people of a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath, we're told that? God is mysterious.

  Sam Harris

  People, Suffering, Religion

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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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• 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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• 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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• The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.

  Sam Harris

  Atheist, Talking, Religion

  "Letter to a Christian Nation". Book by Sam Harris, reason.com. January 8, 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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• 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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• Religious faith obscures uncertainty where uncertainty . . . exists, allowing the unknown, the implausible, and the . . . false to achieve primacy over the facts.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Religion, Facts

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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