When someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust, because he visits suffering… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral - that is, when pressing these… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Almost all our suffering is the product of our thoughts. We spend nearly every moment of our lives lost in thought, and… — 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
Positive social emotions like compassion and empathy are generally good for us, and we want to encourage them. But do we know… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
We do not know what awaits each of us after death, but we know that we will die. Clearly, it must be… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
The problem of human suffering is never too much rational thinking, or too high a demand for evidence. But the solutions are.… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“Habitual identification with discursive thought is the source of human suffering” — 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
The moment we realize that the only things we can intelligibly value are actual and potential changes in the experience of conscious… — 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
Religion has convinced us that there's something else entirely other than concerns about suffering. There's concerns about what God wants, there's concerns… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
“Our habitual failure to recognise thought as thought, our habitual identification with discursive thought, is the primary source of human suffering.” — 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
When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we… — Sam Harris Copy Share Image
Faith drives a wedge between ethics and suffering. Where certain actions cause no suffering at all, religious dogmatists still maintain that they… — 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