Sam Harris Quotes - Page 8

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• There is no reason whatsoever to think that Buddhism can compete successfully with the relentless evangelizing of Christianity and Islam. Nor should it try to.

  Sam Harris

  Buddhism, Thinking, Trying

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• The same comparison holds true within the United States itself: Southern and Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious literalism, are especially plagued by [high rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, and infant mortality], while the comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European standards.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Pregnancy, Sexually Transmitted Diseases

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• It is also true that the less competent a person is in a given domain, the more he will tend to overestimate his abilities. This often produces an ugly marriage of confidence and ignorance that is very difficult to correct for.

  Sam Harris

  Ignorance, Ugly, Produce

  Sam Harris (2011). “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values”, p.123, Simon and Schuster

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• There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by the accommodations they have made to religious irrationality.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Scientist, Made

  "The Politics of Ignorance". www.huffingtonpost.com. August 02, 2005.

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• There must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. On this view, some people and cultures will be right (to a greater or lesser degree), and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life.

  Sam Harris

  Fall, Views, People

  Sam Harris (2011). “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values”, p.195, Simon and Schuster

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• Faith drives a wedge between ethics and suffering. Where certain actions cause no suffering at all, religious dogmatists still maintain that they are evil and worthy of punishment. . . . And yet, where suffering and death are found in abundance their causes are often deemed to be good. . . . This inversion of priorities not only victimizes innocent people and squanders scarce resources; it completely falsifies our ethics.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Punishment, Suffering And Death

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• God is great"). Conversations about the practical impossibility of God's existence and the science-based irrationality of an afterlife slid seamlessly into xenophobia over Muslim immigration or the practice of veiling. The New Atheists became the new Islamophobes, their invectives against Muslims resembling the rowdy, uneducated ramblings of backwoods racists rather than appraisals based on intellect, rationality and reason. "Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death.

  Sam Harris

  Atheist, Xenophobia, Practice

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• We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.

  Sam Harris

  Looks, Honest, Profile

  "In Defense of Profiling" by Sam Harris, samharris.org. April 28, 2012.

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• Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well--by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary God.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Reality, Attachment

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

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• My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on their own. That's not to say that all religious people are lunatics or idiots. It's anything but that.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Believe, People

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• We are free to burn the Qur’an or any other book, and to criticize Muhammad or any other human being. Let no one forget it.

  Sam Harris

  Book, Forget, Muhammad

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• We are now in the 21st century: all books, including the Koran, should be fair game for flushing down the toilet without fear of violent reprisal.

  Sam Harris

  Book, Games, Toilets

  "Bombing Our Illusions". www.huffingtonpost.com. October 10, 2005.

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• People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power. The only thing we should respect in a person’s faith is his desire for a better life in this world; we need never have respected his certainty that one awaits him in the next.

  Sam Harris

  Strong, People, Desire

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

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• ‎Faith, if it is ever right about anything, is right by accident

  Sam Harris

  Accidents, Ifs

  Sam Harris (2011). “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

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• We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence.

  Sam Harris

  Atheist, Atheism, Logical

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• What are the chances that we will one day discover that DNA has absolutely nothing to do with inheritance? They are effectively zero.

  Sam Harris

  Zero, Dna, One Day

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.76, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am extremely critical of all religious faiths.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Familiar, Critical

  "Bombing Our Illusions" by Sam Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 10, 2005.

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• It is still fashionable to believe that how you organize yourself religiously in this life may matter for eternity. Unless we can erode the prestige of that kind of thinking, we're not going to be able to undermine these divisions in our world.

  Sam Harris

  Believe, Thinking, Our World

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• Unreason is now ascendant in the United States—in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government.

  Sam Harris

  School, Government, United States

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.230, W. W. Norton & Company

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• You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books.

  Sam Harris

  Book, Government, Three

  "Religion, Terror, and Self-Transcendence". CSPAN-2, November 16, 2005.

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• Liberals tend to understand that a person can be lucky or unlucky in all matters relevant to his success. Conservatives, however, often make a religious fetish of individualism. Many seem to have absolutely no awareness of how fortunate one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, physically healthy, and not bankrupted in middle age by the illness of a spouse.

  Sam Harris

  Religious, Intelligent, Healthy

  Sam Harris (2012). “Free Will”, p.61, Simon and Schuster

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• Any conception of human well-being you could plausibly have, the Taliban patently fails to maximize it.

  Sam Harris

  Failing, Well Being, Wells

  "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 problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good.

  Sam Harris

  People, Giving, Problem

  "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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• There's no way to reconcile Islam with Christianity. This difference of opinion admits of compromise as much as a coin toss does.

  Sam Harris

  Differences, Islam, Doe

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• Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches.

  Sam Harris

  Religion, Witch, Murder

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

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