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False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.

Sam Harris

Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name.
SAM HARRIS

Man Measurement Miracle Mystery Name Worth
Faith enables many of us to endure life’s difficulties with an equanimity that would be scarcely conceivable in a world lit only by reason.
SAM HARRIS

Difficult Endurance Faith Life Reason
Jesus Christ—who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens—can now be eaten in the form of a cracker
SAM HARRIS

Born Eat Food God Heaven Virgin
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

Conscious Freedom Ourselves Simplicity Thinking Willing
Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn’t care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.
SAM HARRIS

Atheist Care Existence God Imagination Stop Wisdom Yourself
Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.
SAM HARRIS

Believe Dangerous Ethics People Yourself
An average Christian, in an average church, listen to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse — and there have been some extraordinary arrogant scientists.
SAM HARRIS

Arrogance Church
When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn’t. Religion is one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies.
SAM HARRIS

Honesty Imagination Integrity Intellectual Religion Standard Truth Yourself
It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.
SAM HARRIS

Faith Ourselves People Reason Religious Time
The problem with religion, because it’s been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.
SAM HARRIS

Alone Believe Criticism People Problem Religion
The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are.
SAM HARRIS

Fact Myself Reason Rejection Thinking
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

Collaboration End Evidence Human Open Ourselves Security World
Values reduce to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.
SAM HARRIS

Creature Fact Reduce Value
We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.
SAM HARRIS

Difference Goodness Natural Ourselves Reminder
False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.
SAM HARRIS

Encouragement Fake Motivational Person Purpose
I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.
SAM HARRIS

Evidence History Human Myself Society

False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.

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False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.

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