Argument Quote by Sam Harris

“The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us.”

Sam Harris

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.0 out of 5 (5 ratings)

Argument Belief Common Evidence Facts Faith Human beings Humans Openness Permit Secure Way Willingness World

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…

Sam Harris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image

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

Sam Harris

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

Image

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

Sam Harris

Image

Explore all 543 Sam Harris quotes

More Argument quotes

A flourishing, morally credible media is a vital component in the maintenance of genuinely public talk, argument about common good.

Rowan Williams

Image

Preaching to the choir actually arms the choir with arguments and elevates the choir's discourse. There's a reason the right does it and does…

Dan Savage

Image

Lutherans, whose arguments and mistakes will not be difficult to contest or discover, do not want to attribute any value to works, and they…

Michael Servetus

Image

Any comprehensive doctrine, religious or secular, can be introduced into any political argument at any time, but I argue that people who do this…

John Rawls

Image

As opposed to getting into arguments about, well, these folks have been treated fairly so now we're going to be doing things that, very…

Barack Obama

Image

There could be no more powerful argument against mixing religion and government than the success of independent African American churches in placing racial segregation…

Susan Jacoby

Image

The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into…

Arthur Koestler

Image

On the stage, the characters express themselves more through words than images. So the arguments of the characters and the tension between characters -…

Alan Alda