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What would our world be like if we ceased to worry about ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ or ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ and simply acted so as to maximize well-being, our own and that of others? Would we lose anything important?

Sam Harris

Muslims must learn that if they make belligerent and fanatical claims upon the tolerance of free societies, they will meet the limits of that tolerance.
SAM HARRIS

Freedom Learning Limitation Society Tolerance
It’s simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.
SAM HARRIS

Frame Moral Religion True Universe
An argument can be logically valid, but unsound in that it contains a false premise and, therefore, leads to a false conclusion (e.g., Scientists are smart; smart people do not make mistakes; therefore, scientists do not make mistakes).
SAM HARRIS

Argument Assumption Fake Leadership Logic Mistake Science
The freedom to think out loud on certain topics, without fear of being hounded into hiding or killed, has already been lost.
SAM HARRIS

Freedom Hide Kill Lost Thinking
The power of psychedelics is that they often reveal, in the span of a few hours, depths of awe and understanding that can otherwise elude us for a lifetime.
SAM HARRIS

Life Power Reveal Science Time Understand
From my point of view, compatibilism is a little like saying: a puppet is free so long as it loves its strings.
SAM HARRIS

Freedom Love Point View
It is time we recognized that belief is not a private matter; it has never been merely private. In fact, beliefs are scarcely more private than actions are, for every belief is a fount of action in potential.
SAM HARRIS

Action Belief Potential Privacy Time
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
Unlike statements of fact, which require no further work on our part, lies must be continually protected from collisions with reality.
SAM HARRIS

Fact Reality Statement Work
Values reduce to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.
SAM HARRIS

Creature Fact Reduce Value
The deity who stalked the deserts of the Middle East millennia ago-and who seems to have abandoned them to bloodshed in his name ever since-is no one to consult on questions of ethics.
SAM HARRIS

Abandonment Desert Ethics Question
You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.
SAM HARRIS

Decision Word Yourself
Religious faith obscures uncertainty where uncertainty exists, allowing the unknown, the implausible, and the false to achieve primacy over the facts.
SAM HARRIS

Achievement Fact Faith Fake Religious Uncertain
The difference between science and religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately consider new evidence and new arguments , and a passionate unwillingness to do so.
SAM HARRIS

Argument Difference Evidence Passionate Willing
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
A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
SAM HARRIS

Freedom Himself Love

What would our world be like if we ceased to worry about ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ or ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ and simply acted so as to maximize well-being, our own and that of others? Would we lose anything important?

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What would our world be like if we ceased to worry about ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ or ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ and simply acted so as to maximize well-being, our own and that of others? Would we lose anything important?

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Sam Harris Quotes