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
“We will embarrass our descendants, just as our ancestors embarrass us. This is moral progress.” — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
We should reserve the notion of 'morality' for the ways in which we can affect one another's experience for better or worse.… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
There are a few dogmas and double standards and really regrettable exports from philosophy that have confounded the thinking of scientists on… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
We can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about morality and the human well-being - a conversation in which we avail ourselves of… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Human well-being is not a random phenomenon. It depends on many factors - ranging from genetics and neurobiology to sociology and economics.… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe… — 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
Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim Algebra, we will see tht there is no such thing… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“This concept of the afterlife really functions as a substitute for wisdom. It functions as a substitute for really absorbing our predicament,… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
There must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. On… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
To treat others ethically is to act out of concern for their happiness and suffering. — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“There is a sense in which all cognition can be said to be motivated. One is motivated to understand the world, to… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It's really no more inflammatory than that. — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
The moral landscape is the framework I use for thinking about questions of morality and human values in universal terms. — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“One of the most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Our moral reasoning is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the wag-the-dog illusion: We believe that our own… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
It's simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality. — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment,… — 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
