Skip to content

Religious Quotes by Sam Harris

44 Religious quotes by Sam Harris

All Religious quotes Sam Harris’s page

Sam Harris argues that faith often replaces evidence, which can hurt honest discussion. He points out that moral decisions, like protecting a child over a blastocyst, rely on reason, not belief alone. He also says religion contains some truth in experience and community, but it often clashes with science.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am extremely critical of all religious faiths.

Image

Religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction.

Image

“...religious beliefs are simply beyond the scope of rational discourse.”

Image

Religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.

Image

Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma.

Image

It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing…

Image

“Religious moderates seem to believe that what we need is not radical insight and innovation in these areas but a mere dilution…

Image

The moral truth here is obvious: anyone who feels that the interests of a blastocyst just might supersede the interests of a…

Image

The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of…

Image

While the religious divisions in our world are self-evident, many people still imagine that religious conflict is always caused by a lack…

Image

Although many things can be said in criticism of religious faith, there is no discounting its power. Millions among us, even now,…

Image

“Religious moderation springs from the fact that even the least educated person among us simply knows more about certain matters than anyone…

Image

We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural…

Image

My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on…

Image

One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest…

Image

Faith drives a wedge between ethics and suffering. Where certain actions cause no suffering at all, religious dogmatists still maintain that they…

Image

Religious ideas about good and evil tend to focus on how to achieve well-being in the next life, and this makes them…

Image

How can we encourage other human beings to extend their moral sympathies beyond a narrow locus? How can we learn to become…

Image

Religious faith is the only area of discourse where immunity through conversation is considered noble . It's the only area of our…

Image

It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer…

Image

Liberals tend to understand that a person can be lucky or unlucky in all matters relevant to his success. Conservatives, however, often…

Image

The problem is not that religious people are stupid. It's not that religious fundamentalists are stupid. I happen to think that you…

Image

All I'm arguing for really is that we should have a conversation where the best ideas really thrive, where there's no taboo…

Image

[I]t is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of…

Image

The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said…

Image

There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our…

Image

While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has…

Image

On the subject of religious belief, we relax standards of reasonableness and evidence that we rely on in every other area of…

Image

While liberals are leery of religious fundamentalism in general, they consistently imagine that all religions at their core teach the same thing…

Image

“The concessions we have made to religious faith - to the idea that belief can be sanctified by something other than evidence…

Image

Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why…

Image

“While religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction, it is…

Image

Religious faith obscures uncertainty where uncertainty . . . exists, allowing the unknown, the implausible, and the . . . false to achieve primacy over the facts.

Image

A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion, because spiritual experience, ethical behavior, and strong communities are essential for human…

Image

The usefulness of religion - the fact that it gives life meaning, that it makes people feel good - is not an…

Image

In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or…

Image

The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims…

Image

The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow…

Image

Nothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonable are certain to be divided by their dogmas.…

Image

“Religious unreason should acquire and even greater stigma in our discourse, given that it remains among the principal causes of armed conflict…

Image

Other authors on Religious

More by Sam Harris

“Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern…

There is no question but that nominally religious scientists like Francis Collins and Kenneth R. Miller are doing lasting harm to our discourse by…

We have Christians against Muslims against Jews, and no matter how liberal your theology, merely identifying yourself as a Christian or a Jew lends…

“Your principal concern appears to be that the Creator of the universe will take offense at something people do while naked. This prudery of…

“As manuals for contemplative understanding, the Bible and the Koran are worse than useless. Whatever wisdom can be found in their pages is never…

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…

“If your golf instructor were to insist that you shave your head, sleep no more than four hours each night, renounce sex, and subsist…

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…

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second…

“But the reality of consciousness appears irreducible. Only consciousness can know itself—and directly, through first-person experience.”

“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…

The problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good.

Muslim moderates, wherever they are, must be given every tool necessary to win a war of ideas with their co-religionists. Otherwise, we will have…

The idea that any one of our religions represents the infallible word of the One True God requires an encyclopedic ignorance of history, mythology,…

“What could possibly cause billions of human beings to reconsider their religious beliefs? And yet, it is obvious that an utter revolution in our…