Sam Harris Quotes

Words like 'God' and 'Allah' must go the way of 'Apollo' and 'Baal' or they will unmake our world.

It is important to realize that our inability to answer a question says nothing about whether the question itself has an answer.

If Jesus does come down out of the clouds like a superhero, Christianity will stand revealed as a science . That will be the science of Christianity.

Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.

All civilized nations must unite in condemnation of a theology that now threatens to destabilize much of the earth.

Principle #1: Avoid dangerous people and dangerous places. Principle #2: Do not defend your property. Principle #3: Respond immediately and escape.

This is how you play tennis without the net

In my own case, the most inflammatory statements I have ever made are ones that I have written and remain willing to defend.

Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance.

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

I think it [getting a gun] should be like getting a pilot's license. I think you should require training to get a license to have a gun.

The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism.

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

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

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

It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed (Aquinas).

To treat others ethically is to act out of concern for their happiness and suffering.

The fact that one can lose one's sense of self in an ocean of tranquility does not mean that one's consciousness is immaterial or that it presided over the birth of the universe.

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

Habitual identification with discursive thought is the source of human suffering

Our habitual failure to recognise thought as thought, our habitual identification with discursive thought, is the primary source of human suffering.

Faith is like a pickpocket who loans a person his own money on generous terms.

Faith is like a pockpocket who loans a person his own money on generous terms.

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

Becoming a part of a movement doesn't help anybody think clearly.

To point out nonepistemic motives in another’s view of the world, therefore, is always a criticism, as it serves to cast doubt upon a person’s connection to the world as it is.

Choosing beliefs freely is not what rational minds do.

That which is aware of sadness is not sad. That which is aware of fear is not fearful. The moment I am lost in thought, however, I'm as confused as anyone else.

It is always now

The only differences between a cult and a religion are the numbers of adherents and the degree to which they are marginalized by the rest of society.

Ideas matter—and philosophy is the art of thinking about them rigorously. In my view, that should be done in as public a forum as possible.

We will embarrass our descendants, just as our ancestors embarrass us. This is moral progress.

People have been murdered over cartoons. End of moral analysis.

Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one.

By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally.

Christians.....expend more “moral” energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide.

There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

You don't choose to choose what you choose in life!

We are not self-caused little gods.

What evidence could possibly be put forward to show that one could have acted differently in the past?

The opportunity to decieve others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance of deception casts us onto some of the steepest ethical terrain we ever cross.

Muslim moderates, wherever they are, must be given every tool necessary to win a war of ideas with their co-religionists. Otherwise, we will have to win some very terrible wars in the future.