“Take a moment to think about the context in which your next decision will occur: You did not pick your parents or… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
I consistently encounter people in academic settings and scientists and journalists who feel that you can't say that anyone is wrong in… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Life is a continuous flux. Our nonhuman ancestors bred, generation after generation, and incrementally begat what we now deem to be the… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“For the first time in my life, I wanted to smell like someone’s smoke. It was Aretha smoke. I decided right then… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“If you pay attention to your inner life, you will see that the emergence of choices, efforts, and intentions is a fundamentally… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“There is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it could well be the highest purpose of… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“A wasteland of embarrassment and social upheaval can be neatly avoidedby following a single precept in life: Do not lie” — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Take a moment to reflect upon the existence of the musical The Book of Mormon. Now imagine the security precautions that would… — 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
“Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Faith enables many of us to endure life's difficulties with an equanimity that would be scarcely conceivable in a world lit only… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“If you're constantly ruminating about what you just did- or what you should have done- or what you would have done if… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
It is still fashionable to believe that how you organize yourself religiously in this life may matter for eternity. Unless we can… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors. — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“I was the muddled concoction of my father’s contradictions. The same man who warned me that “life is a bowl-a shit” was… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“What one believes happens after death dictates much of what one believes about life, and this is why faith-based religion, in presuming… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
The usefulness of religion - the fact that it gives life meaning, that it makes people feel good - is not an… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything in a person’s life.” — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“We have this kind of shibboleth which says: what wasn’t reasoned into existence can’t be reasoned out. The truth I think is… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
If you are perpetually angry, depressed, confused, and unloving, or your attention is elsewhere, it won't matter how successful you become or… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Religious ideas about good and evil tend to focus on how to achieve well-being in the next life, and this makes them… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds - and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“Once a person believes - really believes - that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness, or to its antithesis, he cannot… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
As a parent, it's my responsibility to equip my child to do this - to grieve when grief is necessary and to… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“This is not (as you have charged) to paint religion with a broad brush. I am very quick to distinguish gradations of… — 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
