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

Sam Harris

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 HARRIS

Advice Appearance Level Oneself Wisdom
Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship.
SAM HARRIS

Definition Lying Relationship Trust Understand
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
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
This 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 HARRIS

Believe Ourselves Perfection Religion True
The moral landscape is the framework I use for thinking about questions of morality and human values in universal terms.
SAM HARRIS

Frame Human Myself Question Thinking Value
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 science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It’s really no more inflammatory than that.
SAM HARRIS

Health Moral Science Social
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
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
Faith does not offer a strong link between our beliefs and actual states of the world.
SAM HARRIS

Belief Faith Link Strong World
The truth is that we simply do not know what happens after death.
SAM HARRIS

Death Philosophy Simplicity Truth
The point is that most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday.
SAM HARRIS

Current Hold Holy Thinking
It is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.
SAM HARRIS

Book Ordinary Product Value
George Bush says he speaks to god every day, & Christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to god through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd.
SAM HARRIS

Failure Religion
The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.
SAM HARRIS

Appearance Atheist Fantasy Life Reality Shame Touch

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

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

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