Sam Harris Quotes

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

I have no doubt that your acceptance of Christ coincided with some very positive changes in your lif...

Ideas matter—and philosophy is the art of thinking about them rigorously. In my view, that should be...

The only thing that guarantees an open-ended collaboration among human beings, the only thing that g...

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

What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody'...

Needless to say, there are people who hate Arabs, Somalis, and other immigrants from predominantly M...

False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put to...

By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, r...

Strange bonds of trust and self-deception tend to grow between journalists and their subjects.

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

There is never a moment where I find Trump persuasive. When I look at him I see a man without any in...

This concept of the afterlife really functions as a substitute for wisdom. It functions as a substit...

As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken withou...

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

When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between et...

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

To speak specifically of our problem with the Muslim world, we are meandering into a genuine clash o...

There is never a moment where I find Trump persuasive. When I look at him I see a man without any in...

Religion provides the only story that is fundamentally consoling in the face of the worst possible e...

You can't take credit for your talents, but it matters that you use them. You can't really be blamed...

It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, dee...

Theology is ignorance with wings.

When we consider that so few generations had passed since thechurch left off disemboweling innocent ...

The problem with religion, because it's been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to b...

The realistic goal to be attained through spiritual practice is not some permanent state of enlighte...

All I’m arguing for really is that we should have a conversation where the best ideas really thrive,...

There is never a moment where I find Trump persuasive. When I look at him I see a man without any in...

My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiot...

I'm the Ted Bundy of string theory.

We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses....

We have barely emerged from centuries of barbarism. It's not a surprise that there are shocking ineq...

Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.

If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should ...

I don't think there's an interesting boundary between philosophy and science. Science is totally beh...

In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclea...

According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after thing...

Muslim moderates, wherever they are, must be given every tool necessary to win a war of ideas with t...

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

If we cannot find our way to a time when most of us are willing to admit that, at the very least, we...

By wearing cosmetics a woman seeks to look younger or more beautiful than she otherwise would. Hones...

If you're constantly ruminating about what you just did- or what you should have done- or what you w...

The usefulness of religion - the fact that it gives life meaning, that it makes people feel good - i...

Habitual identification with discursive thought is the source of human suffering

Our habitual failure to recognise thought as thought, our habitual identification with discursive th...

If there is any kernel of truth in the religions we so deplore,and they are just a carnival of error...

The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil is insurmountable. T...

Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmo...

even if Noam Chomsky were right about everything, the Islamic doctrines related to martyrdom, jihad,...

How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by event...

You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.

Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transce...

We're right to say that a culture that can't tolerate free speech is... there are a wide range of po...

Liberals tend to understand that a person can be lucky or unlucky in all matters relevant to his suc...

That which is aware of sadness is not sad. That which is aware of fear is not fearful. The moment I ...

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to belie...

Nothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonab...

Science does not limit itself merely to what is currently verifiable. But it is interested in questi...

We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war...

It's simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.

The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence.

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

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large...

While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilit...

Let me assure you that my intent is not to offend or merely be provocative. I'm simply worried.

As a parent, it's my responsibility to equip my child to do this - to grieve when grief is necessary...

In Islam, it is the "moderate" who is left to split hairs,because the basic thrust of the doctrine i...

Religion has convinced us that there's something else entirely other than concerns about suffering. ...

We are all trying to find a path back to the present moment. And good enough reason to just be happy...

One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source ...

Losing a belief in free will has not made me fatalistic—in fact, it has increased my feelings of fre...

Becoming sensitive to the background causes of one's thoughts and feelings can—paradoxically—allow f...

It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: On the one ha...

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

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.

Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the ob...

One of the most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality...

Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the ob...

The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least shou...

The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with Go...

It is difficult to think of anything more important than providing the best education possible for o...

While believing strongly, without evidence, is considered a mark of madness or stupidity in any othe...

I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of e...

As many critics of religion have pointed out, the notion of a creator poses an immediate problem of ...

The opportunity to deceive others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance casts us ont...

Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected. But the o...

Honesty can force any dysfunction in your life to the surface. Are you in an abusive relationship? A...

Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected.

The opportunity to decieve others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance of deception...

Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and fa...

As human being, we live in a perpetual conversation between conversation and violence; what apart fr...

It is time we admitted, from kings and presidents on down, that there is no evidence that any of our...

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

What are the chances that we will one day discover that DNA has absolutely nothing to do with inheri...

Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The ver...

This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery...

Faith is the mortar that fills the cracks in the evidence and the gaps in the logic, and thus it is ...

Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invis...

It is also worth noting that one can obtain a Ph.D. in any branch of science for no other purpose th...

[I]t is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie ...