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Portrait of Sam Harris

Sam Harris

(1967) Religious Studies Scholar United Kingdom

543 quotes in 1854 categories

Sam Harris argues that religious texts are often less useful for deep thinking than people assume. He points out that faith groups can divide us, creating conflict between Christians, Muslims, and Jews. He also mocks extreme discipline, like a golf instructor demanding bizarre habits, to show how absurd strict rules can be.

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Sam Harris is a religious studies scholar from the United Kingdom, best known for What Are You Optimistic About?.

Quick Facts About Sam Harris

Born: April 9, 1967
Nationality: United Kingdom
Profession: Religious Studies Scholar
Notable works: What Are You Optimistic About?

About Sam Harris

Sam Harris is an American neuroscientist, philosopher, author and podcast host who writes about rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics, politics, terrorism and artificial intelligence. He became well known for criticizing religion and is often called one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, together with Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett.

Quotes by Sam Harris

“These silences are lacerating.”

Silence

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“Life is not a noun, it's a verb.”

Life

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As a man believes, so he will act.

Belief

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“It is always now”

Consciousness

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Theology is ignorance with wings.

Atheism

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I'm the Ted Bundy of string theory.

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Faith, if it is ever right about anything, is right by accident

Accident

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Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance.

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The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence.

Atheism

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Fundamentalism is only a problem if the fundamentals are a problem

Fundamentalism

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A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

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“Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making.”

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If premarital sex is a sin, who is the victim?

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This is how you play tennis without the net

Play

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All civilized nations must unite in condemnation of a theology that now threatens to destabilize much of the earth.

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Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches.

Heretic

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“I want to maximize my happiness, but I am generally not moved to do what I believe will make me happier than…

Happier

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“I remembered the motto of a good friend: “When a limo pulls up— get in.”

Friendship

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“...the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish.”

Bible

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It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.

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It is time we admitted that we are not at war with “terrorism.” We are at war with Islam.

Islam

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We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence.

Atheism

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When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal…

Atheism

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“If you're constantly ruminating about what you just did- or what you should have done- or what you would have done if…

Buddhism

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Meditation puts into question more or less everything you tend to do in your search for happiness. But if you lose sight…

Happiness

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I think when you say to someone You are fool not to believe in evolution or a fool to believe the universe…

Accidents

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“In the best case, notions of God’s love and grace provide some relief—but the central message of these faiths is that each…

Faith

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“Your principal concern appears to be that the Creator of the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. This…

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“If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t…

Argument

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It seems to me patently obvious that we can no more respect and tolerate vast differences in notions of human well-being than…

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“What is the alternative to religion as we know it? As it turns out, this is the wrong question to ask. Chemistry…

Alchemy

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“If your golf instructor were to insist that you shave your head, sleep no more than four hours each night, renounce sex,…

Golf

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In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or…

Alchemist

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A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and…

Alive

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“I have a friend who is a very successful writer. Early in his career, he wrote a script that I thought was…

Friendship

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The usefulness of religion - the fact that it gives life meaning, that it makes people feel good - is not an…

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It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the…

Accidents

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“Countries with high levels of atheism are also the most charitable both in terms of the percentage of their wealth they devote…

Christian values

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“Vulnerability comes in pretending to be someone you are not.”

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You can learn something about a person by the company she keeps.

Business

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Sam Harris by topic

Religion (167) Faith (89) Time (58) People (51) World (46) Religious (44) Life (41) Atheism (39) Atheist (35) Humans (34) Thinking (31) Belief (31) Truth (30) Science (29) Reason (26) Islam (26) Morality (25) Character (25)