We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.
SAM HARRISWe must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.
SAM HARRISThe 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 HARRISWe will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.
SAM HARRISThis is the true horror of religion. It allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions, what only lunatics could believe on their own.
SAM HARRISWhat I’m asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.
SAM HARRISAn 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 HARRISMuslims 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 HARRISA puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
SAM HARRISReligious faith obscures uncertainty where uncertainty exists, allowing the unknown, the implausible, and the false to achieve primacy over the facts.
SAM HARRISTo say that I would have done otherwise had I wanted to is simply to say that I would have lived in a different universe had I been in a different universe.
SAM HARRISAtheism is just a way of clearing the space for better conversations.
SAM HARRISFalse encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.
SAM HARRISI 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 HARRISThe 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 HARRISYou are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.
SAM HARRISFaith 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