“Our minds are all we have. They are all we have ever had. And they are all we can offer others.” — 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
“Despite our attachment to the notion of free will, most of us know that disorders of the brain can trump the best… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
You almost never get the pleasure of seeing that you won the argument in real time. People just don't like to publicly… — 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
“Some pleasures are intrinsically ethical—feelings like love, gratitude, devotion, and compassion. To inhabit these states of mind is, by definition, to be… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: On the one hand, we can't make sense… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“The only angels we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“Being wisely selfish and being selfless can amount to very much the same thing. There are centuries of anecdotal testimony on this… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Every one of the world's "great" religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“If my brain were surgically divided by callosotomy tomorrow, this would create at least two independent conscious minds, both of which would… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“There is nothing passive about mindfulness. One might even say that it expresses a specific kind of passion—a passion for discerning what… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“Our minds are all we have. They are all we have ever had. And they are all we can offer others. This… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“It is always now. This might sound trite, but it is the truth. It’s not quite true as a matter of neurology,… — 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
“This is an empirical claim: Look closely enough at your own mind in the present moment, and you will discover that the… — 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