Civilization Quotes by Sam Harris

11 Civilization quotes by Sam Harris

All Civilization quotes Sam Harris’s page

When the mind seeks clarity on how societies shape our choices, Harris’s brief collection offers a focused glimpse. The quotes distill his rational approach, serving as a compact reference for anyone pondering the underpinnings of collective life.

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If history reveals any categorical truth, it is that an insufficient taste for evidence regularly brings out the worst in us. Add…

Sam Harris

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That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now…

Sam Harris

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One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization…

Sam Harris

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We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural…

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Nearly half of the American population is eagerly anticipating the end of the world. This dewy-eyed nihilism provides absolutely no incentive to…

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One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest…

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To speak specifically of our problem with the Muslim world, we are meandering into a genuine clash of civilizations, and we're deluding…

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The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We…

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The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow…

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It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that,…

Sam Harris

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“We have barely emerged from centuries of barbarism. It's not a surprise that there are shocking inequities in this world. It is…

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“Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern…

Sam Harris

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There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by…

Sam Harris

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We have Christians against Muslims against Jews, and no matter how liberal your theology, merely identifying yourself as a Christian or a Jew lends…

Sam Harris

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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 prudery of…

Sam Harris

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“As manuals for contemplative understanding, the Bible and the Koran are worse than useless. Whatever wisdom can be found in their pages is never…

Sam Harris

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About 120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer. If our polls are…

Sam Harris

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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, and subsist…

Sam Harris

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The fact that one can lose one's sense of self in an ocean of tranquility does not mean that one's consciousness is immaterial or…

Sam Harris

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The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second…

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“But the reality of consciousness appears irreducible. Only consciousness can know itself—and directly, through first-person experience.”

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“Whether or not one likes Huntington's formulation, one thing is clear: the evil that has finally reached our shores is not merely the evil…

Sam Harris

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The problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good.

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Muslim moderates, wherever they are, must be given every tool necessary to win a war of ideas with their co-religionists. Otherwise, we will have…

Sam Harris

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The idea that any one of our religions represents the infallible word of the One True God requires an encyclopedic ignorance of history, mythology,…

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“What could possibly cause billions of human beings to reconsider their religious beliefs? And yet, it is obvious that an utter revolution in our…

Sam Harris

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