We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence. — 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
“Faith is like a pockpocket who loans a person his own money on generous terms.” — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
It's not so much religion per se, it's false certainty that worries me, and religion just has more than its fair share… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and the United Kingdom are among the least religious societies on… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance. — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin—which seems to justify not only harsh punishment in… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“Our situation is this: most of the people in this world believe that the Creator of the universe has written a book.… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
To not believe in God is to know that it falls to us to make the world a better place. — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“The search for comfort at the expense of truth has never been a motive for religious belief, since all creeds are chock-full… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“Over one million people died in the orgy of religious killing that attended the partitioning of India and Pakistan. The two countries… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialog with God. If he said… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“The fact that the universe is illuminated where you stand—that your thoughts and moods and sensations have a qualitative character in this… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. — 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
“There seems, however, to be a problem with some of our more cherished beliefs about the world: they are leading us, inexorably,… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“What is the alternative to religion as we know it? As it turns out, this is the wrong question to ask. Chemistry… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“Faith is like a pickpocket who loans a person his own money on generous terms.” — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“...religious beliefs are simply beyond the scope of rational discourse.” — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.” — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“Faith is the mortar that fills the cracks in the evidence and the gaps in the logic, and thus it is faith… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum. — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
This is the true horror of religion. It allows perfectly decent and sane people to believe by the billions, what only lunatics… — 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
