01UndatedTell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.Sam Harris / quote ↗
02UndatedWhen we consider that so few generations had passed since thechurch left off disemboweling innocent men before the eyes of theirfamilies, burning old women alive in public squares, and torturingscholars to the point of madness for merely speculating about thenature of the stars, it is perhaps little wonder that it failed to thinkanything had gone terribly amiss in Germany during the war years.Sam Harris / quote ↗
04UndatedHow 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 / quote ↗
05UndatedLiberals 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 / quote ↗
07UndatedWhat evidence could possibly be put forward to show that one could have acted differently in the past?Sam Harris / quote ↗
08UndatedThe 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.Sam Harris / quote ↗
09UndatedBy wearing cosmetics a woman seeks to look younger or more beautiful than she otherwise would. Honesty doesn't require that she issue a continuous disclaimer: "I see you are looking at my face. Please be aware that I don't look this good first thing in the morning.Sam Harris / quote ↗
10UndatedOf course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected.Sam Harris / quote ↗
11UndatedFalse encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.Sam Harris / quote ↗
12UndatedWhile religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive.Sam Harris / quote ↗
13UndatedMuslim 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.Sam Harris / quote ↗
14UndatedScience 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 / quote ↗
15UndatedI don't think there's an interesting boundary between philosophy and science. Science is totally beholden to philosophy. There are philosophical assumptions in science and there's no way to get around that.Sam Harris / quote ↗
16UndatedScience does not limit itself merely to what is currently verifiable. But it is interested in questions that are potentially verifiable (or, rather, falsifiable).Sam Harris / quote ↗
17UndatedAs a parent, it's my responsibility to equip my child to do this - to grieve when grief is necessary and to realize that life is still profoundly beautiful and worth living despite the fact that we inevitably lose one another and that life ends, and we don't know what happens after death.Sam Harris / quote ↗
18UndatedReligion provides the only story that is fundamentally consoling in the face of the worst possible experiences - the death of a parent, for instance. In fact, many religions take away the problem entirely, because their adherents ostensibly believe that they're going to be reunited with everyone they love, and death is an illusion.Sam Harris / quote ↗
19UndatedMy 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 / quote ↗
20UndatedTo speak specifically of our problem with the Muslim world, we are meandering into a genuine clash of civilizations, and we're deluding ourselves with euphemisms. We're talking about Islam being a religion of peace that's been hijacked by extremists. If ever there were a religion that's not a religion of peace, it is Islam.Sam Harris / quote ↗
21UndatedThe problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good.Sam Harris / quote ↗
22UndatedReligion has convinced us that there's something else entirely other than concerns about suffering. There's concerns about what God wants, there's concerns about what's going to happen in the afterlife.Sam Harris / quote ↗
23UndatedThe usefulness of religion - the fact that it gives life meaning, that it makes people feel good - is not an argument for the truth of any religious doctrine. It's not an argument that it's reasonable to believe that Jesus really was born of a virgin or that the Bible is the perfect word of the creator of the universe.Sam Harris / quote ↗
24UndatedIt's simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.Sam Harris / quote ↗
