“In adaptive terms, belief has been extraordinarily useful. It is, after all, by believing various propositions about the world that we predict… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion, because spiritual experience, ethical behavior, and strong communities are essential for human… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Indeed, what is startling about the notion of a victimless crime is that even when the behavior in question is genuinely victimless,… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything in a person’s life. Are you a scientist? A liberal? A… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“Decisions, intentions, efforts, goals, willpower, etc., are causal states of the brain, leading to specific behaviors, and behaviors lead to outcomes in… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
The habit of spending nearly every waking moment lost in thought leaves us at the mercy of whatever our thoughts happen to… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“Whatever their conscious motives, these men cannot know why they are as they are. As sickening as I find their behavior, I… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
The only thing that guarantees an open-ended collaboration among human beings, the only thing that guarantees that this project is truly open-ended,… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“The principal enemy of mindfulness—or of any meditative practice—is our deeply conditioned habit of being distracted by thoughts. The problem is not… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“And there is something degraded and degrading about many of our habits of attention as we shop, gossip, argue, and ruminate our… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“But the reality of consciousness appears irreducible. Only consciousness can know itself—and directly, through first-person experience.” — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
The problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good. — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
![“Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern world. [...] The first thing to observe about the moderate’s retreat from scriptural literalism is that it draws its inspiration not from scripture but from…” quote by Sam Harris](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/b44/sam-harris-457_bible_moderates-in-every-faith-are-obliged-to_6967.jpg)
