Most of us are wiser than we may appear to be. On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow ones own advice.
SAM HARRISMost of us are wiser than we may appear to be. On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow ones own advice.
SAM HARRISYou don’t get anything worth getting, by pretending to know things you don’t know.
SAM HARRISChristians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a thelogically defensible reading of the Bible.
SAM HARRISYou almost never get the pleasure of seeing that you won the argument in real time. People just don’t like to publicly change their minds. They change their minds in private.
SAM HARRISWhat 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 HARRISIt is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.
SAM HARRISSome propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.
SAM HARRISFaith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.
SAM HARRISUnlike statements of fact, which require no further work on our part, lies must be continually protected from collisions with reality.
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 HARRISThe habit of spending nearly every waking moment lost in thought leaves us at the mercy of whatever our thoughts happen to be. Meditation is a way of breaking this spell.
SAM HARRISIt 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 HARRISIf you are perpetually angry, depressed, confused, and unloving, or your attention is elsewhere, it won’t matter how successful you become or who is in your life – you won’t enjoy any of it.
SAM HARRISA puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
SAM HARRISThe 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 HARRISIf premarital sex is a sin, who is the victim?
SAM HARRIS