1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Sam Harris

Sam Harris Quotes
page 3

Samuel Benjamin Harris is an American author, philosopher, neuroscientist, blogger and podcast host. He is a critic of religion and proponent of the liberty to criticize it. His articles discuss topics including religion, morality, neuroscience, free will, terrorism, and self-defense, and his first book, The End of Faith , is a critique of organized religion. He is described as one of the "Four Horsemen of atheism", alongside Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and the late Christopher Hitchens.

In The Moral Landscape , he argues that science answers moral problems and can aid human well-being. He published a long-form essay Lying in 2011, the short book Free Will in 2012, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion in 2014 and, with British writer Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue in 2015. Harris is a proponent of secular meditation practices.

✵ 9. April 1967   •   Other names سم هریس
Sam Harris photo
Sam Harris: 151   quotes 6   likes

Sam Harris Quotes

“Many people who experience illness imagine that everyone else is blissfully getting on with life in perfect health—and this illusion compounds their suffering.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris, Adventures in the Land of Illness http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/adventures-in-the-land-of-illness (May 26, 2014)
2010s

Life , People , Health , Imagination

“We hear everywhere about this false trade-off between freedom of speech and freedom of religion, as though there were some kind of balance to be struck here. There is no balance to be struck. Freedom of speech never infringes on freedom of religion. There is nothing I can say in this podcast about religion in general, or about Islam in particular, that would infringe upon someone else's freedom to practice his or her religion. If your freedom of religion entails that you force those who do not share it to conform to it, well that's not freedom of religion. We have a word for that – that's theocracy. This respect that we are all urged to show for "religious sensitivity" is actually a demand that the blasphemy laws of Islam be followed by non-muslims.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris, "After Charlie Hebdo and Other Thoughts" (21 January 2015) http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/after-charlie-hebdo-and-other-thoughts
2010s

Religion , Law , Freedom , Falseness

“Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next - a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please - your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this "decision" and believe that you are in the process of making it.”

Sam Harris

Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), p. 9

Decision , Freedom , Appearance , Time

“Science has long been in the value business. Despite a widespread belief to the contrary, scientific validity is not the result of scientists abstaining from making value judgments; rather, scientific validity is the result of scientists making their best efforts to value principles of reasoning that link their beliefs to reality, through reliable chains of evidence and argument. This is how norms of rational thought are made effective… The answer to the question "What should I believe, and why should I believe it?"”

Sam Harris

is generally a scientific one.
Source: 2010s, The Moral Landscape (2010), p. 143–144

Question , Business , Reality , Effort

“This is a common criticism: the idea that the atheist is guilty of a literalist reading of scripture, and that it’s a very naive way of approaching religion, and there’s a far more sophisticated and nuanced view of religion on offer and the atheist is disregarding that. A few problems with this: anyone making that argument is failing to acknowledge just how many people really do approach these texts literally or functionally - whether they’re selective literalists, or literal all the way down the line. There are certain passages in scripture that just cannot be read figuratively. And people really do live by the lights of what is literally laid out in these books. So, the Koran says “hate the infidel” and Muslims hate the infidel because the Koran spells it out ad nauseam. Now, it’s true that you can cherry-pick scripture, and you can look for all the good parts. You can ignore where it says in Leviticus that if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night you’re supposed to stone her to death on her father’s doorstep. Most religious people ignore those passages, which really can only be read literally, and say that “they were only appropriate for the time” and “they don’t apply now”. And likewise, Muslims try to have the same reading of passages that advocate holy war. They say “well, these were appropriate to those battles that Mohammed was fighting, but now we don’t have to fight those battles”. This is all a good thing, but we should recognize what’s happening here: people are feeling pressure from a host of all-too-human concerns that have nothing, in principle, to do with God: secularism, and human rights, and democracy, and scientific progress. These have made certain passages in scripture untenable. This is coming from outside religion, and religion is now making a great show of its sophistication in grappling with these pressures. This is an example of religion losing the argument with modernity.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris in interview by Big Think (04/07/2007) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zV3vIXZ-1Y&t=6s
2000s

Death , God , Hate , War

“Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: "Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being." Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept.”

Sam Harris

Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. 23

World , Imagination

“It is therefore not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves- socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically.”

Sam Harris

Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. xii

Future , Help , Christ

“I never made more effort than I did when practicing under U Pandita. But most of this effort arose from the very illusion of bondage to the self that I was seeking to overcome. The model of this practice is that one must climb the mountain so that freedom can be found at the top. But the self is already an illusion, and that truth can be glimpsed directly, at the mountain's base or anywhere else along the path. One can then return to this insight, again and again, as one's sole method of meditation—thereby arriving at the goal in each moment of actual practice.”

Sam Harris

Source: 2010s, Waking Up (2014), p. 126

Truth , Mountain , Effort , Freedom

“But what do you think would happen if we had burned a copy of the Koran on tonight's show? There would be riots in scores of countries. Embassies would fall. In response to our mistreating a book, millions of Muslims would take to the streets, and we would spend the rest of our lives fending off credible threats of murder. But when ISIS crucifies people, buries children alive, and rapes and tortures women by the thousands—all in the name of Islam—the response is a few small demonstrations in Europe and a hashtag.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris, "Can Liberalism Be Saved From Itself?" (October 7, 2014) http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-itself
2010s

Women , Children , People , Books

“The treatment of women in Muslim communities throughout the world is unconscionable.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris, "Bombing Our Illusions" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/bombing-our-illusions_b_8615.html (10 October 2005)
2000s

Women , World , Communication

“We are, even now, killing ourselves over ancient literature. Who would have thought something so tragically absurd could be possible?”

Sam Harris

2000s, The End of Faith (2004)

Literature

“To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.”

Sam Harris

2010s, Lying (2011)

Lie , Communication

“The conventional sense of self is an illusion—and [] spirituality largely consists in realizing this, moment to moment. There are logical and scientific reasons to accept this claim, but recognizing it to be true is not a matter of understanding these reasons. Like many illusions, the sense of self disappears when closely examined, and this is done through the practice of meditation.”

Sam Harris

Source: 2010s, Waking Up (2014), p. 82

Understanding , Sense

“Among the many paradoxes of human life, this is perhaps the most peculiar and consequential: We often behave in ways that are guaranteed to make us unhappy. Many of us spend our lives marching with open eyes toward remorse, regret, guilt, and disappointment. And nowhere do our injuries seem more casually self-inflicted, or the suffering we create more disproportionate to the needs of the moment, than in the lies we tell to other human beings. Lying is the royal road to chaos.”

Sam Harris

2010s, Lying (2011)

Life , Disappointment , Way , Lying

“The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we will kill you.”

Sam Harris

Sam, Harris, Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks, Huffingtonpost.com, 19 March 2011, 5 May 2008 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/losing-our-spines-to-save_b_100132.html, (updated 25 May 2011)
2000s

Peace , Religion , Communication

“The urge for retribution depends upon our not seeing the underlying causes of human behavior.”

Sam Harris

Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), p. 55

Behavior , Dependency

“Even when we think we are in the present moment we are in very subtle ways looking over its shoulder anticipating what's coming next. We're always solving a problem. And it's possible to simply drop your problem, if only for a moment, and enjoy whatever is true of your life in the present… This is not a matter of new information or more information. It requires a change in attitude. It requires a change in the attentiveness you pay to your experience in the present moment.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris, "Death and the Present Moment", speech at the Global Atheist Convention (April 2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums&t=24m27s
2010s

Life , Way , Problem , Thinking

“I describe it as anti-profiling. It's not that I want certain people profiled – I just want us to admit that certain people require less scrutiny, and Jerry Seinfeld is one. When you see a famous celebrity go through security, treated as though he may just have become a jihadist when no one was watching… It's crazy. It is security theatre.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris on the Rubin Report, "Sam Harris: For Racial Profiling of Muslims?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsVtM0RFQJI.
2010s

People

“Nothing that I've said makes social and political freedom any less valuable: having a gun to your head is still a problem worth rectifying, wherever intentions come from. So the freedom to do what one wants is still precious. But the idea that we as conscious beings are deeply responsible for what we want I think needs to be revised: it just can't be mapped onto reality, neither objective nor subjective. And if we're going to be guided by reality, rather than by the fantasy lives of our antecessors, I think our view of ourselves needs to change.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris at Sydney Opera House Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2012, Discussion on Free Will http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM3raA1EwrI.
2010s

Idea , Problem , Thinking , Reality

“You are either lucky in this department or you aren't—and you cannot make your own luck.”

Sam Harris

Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), p. 38

“Needless to say, if I knew my daughter would eventually develop a fondness for methamphetamine or crack cocaine, I might never sleep again. But if she does not try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in her adult life, I will worry that she may have missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris, Drugs and the Meaning of Life http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-life/ (5 July 2011)
2010s

Life , Sleep , Daughters

“The fact that millions of people use the term "morality" as a synonym for religious dogmatism, racism, sexism, or other failures of insight and compassion should not oblige us to merely accept their terminology until the end of time.”

Sam Harris

Source: 2010s, The Moral Landscape (2010), p. 53

People , Failure , Time

“There are ways to really live in the present moment. What's the alternative? It is always now. However much you feel you may need to plan for the future, to anticipate it, to mitigate risks, the reality of your life is now. This may sound trite… but it's the truth… As a matter of conscious experience, the reality of your life is always now. I think this is a liberating truth about the human mind. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand about your mind than that if you want to be happy in this world. The past is a memory. It's a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated, it is another thought arising now. What we truly have is this moment. And this. And we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth. Repudiating it. Fleeing it. Overlooking it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment there because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future, and the future never arrives.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris, "Death and the Present Moment", speech at the Global Atheist Convention (April 2012) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITTxTCz4Ums&t=21m21s
2010s

Life , Truth , World , Hope

“If religion were the only durable foundation for morality you would suspect atheists to be really badly behaved. You would go to a group like the National Academy of Sciences. These are the most elite scientists, 93 percent of whom reject the idea of God. You would expect these guys to be raping and killing and stealing with abandon.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris, During speech, The New Atheists (January 5, 2007) http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2007/01/05/january-5-2007-the-new-atheists/3734/
2000s

God , Religion , Guy , Idea

“20 percent of all recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. There is an obvious truth here that cries out for acknowledgment: if God exists, He is the most prolific abortionist of all.”

Sam Harris

Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. 38

God , Truth

“I think it [getting a gun] should be like getting a pilot's license. I think you should require training to get a license to have a gun.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris, Real Time with Bill Maher (February 1, 2013)
2010s

Thinking , Training

“Your mind is all you truly have.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris, Interview with The Minimalists (19 August 2014)
2010s

“There is not a person on earth who chose his genome, or the country of his birth, or the political and economic conditions that prevailed at moments crucial to his progress. And yet, living in America, one gets the distinct sense that if certain conservatives were asked why they weren't born with club feet or orphaned before the age of five, they would not hesitate to take credit for these accomplishments.”

Sam Harris

Source: 2010s, Free Will (2012), p. 61-62

Age , Birth , Sense , Personality

“If God exists, either He can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities, or He does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil.”

Sam Harris

Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. 55

God , Evil

“Although the insights we can have in meditation tell us nothing about the origins of the universe, they do confirm some well-established truths about the human mind: our conventional sense of self is an illusion; positive emotions, such as compassion and patience, are teachable skills; and the way we think directly influences our experience of the world.”

Sam Harris

Source: 2010s, Waking Up (2014), p. 8

Truth , World , Way , Thinking

“Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death….. As a matter of doctrine, the Muslim conception of tolerance is one in which non-Muslims have been politically and economically subdued, converted, or put to sword….. Yes, the Bible contains its own sadistic lunacy—but the above [Qur'an] quotations [taken from The End of Faith, pp. 117-123] can be fairly said to convey the central message of the Qur’an—and of Islam at nearly every moment in its history. The Qur’an does not contain anything like a Sermon on the Mount. Nor is it a vast and self-contradictory book like the Old Testament, in which whole sections (like Leviticus and Deuteronomy) can be easily ignored and forgotten. The result is a unified message of triumphalism, otherworldliness, and religious hatred that has become a problem for the entire world. And the world still waits for moderate Muslims to speak honestly about it.”

Sam Harris

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/honesty-the-muslim-worlds-scarcest-resource 2012-03-01 Honesty: The Muslim World’s Scarcest Resource? - SamHarris.com, accessed March 1, 2012
2010s

Death , Books , World , Faith

“I've read the books. God is not a moderate. There's no place in the books where God says, "You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books."”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris, “Religion, Terror, and Self-Transcendence.” The Ethical Culture Society and the Center for Inquiry, New York, NY, November 16, 2005 (broadcast on CSPAN-2)
2000s

God , Books , World , Reading

“Muslim discourse is currently a tissue of myths, conspiracy theories, and exhortations to recapture the glories of the seventh century.”

Sam Harris

2000s, The End of Faith (2004)

“As a source of objective morality, the Bible is one of the worst books we have. It might be the very worst, in fact—if we didn't also happen to have the Qur'an.”

Sam Harris

Sam Harris, "The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos" (29 March 2006) http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php/articles/2863 — in Free Inquiry, Vol. 26, issue 3
2000s

Books

“Among the many paradoxes of human life, this is perhaps the most peculiar and consequential: We often behave in ways that are guaranteed to make us unhappy.”

Sam Harris

Many of us spend our lives marching with open eyes toward remorse, regret, guilt, and disappointment. And nowhere do our injuries seem more casually self-inflicted, or the suffering we create more disproportionate to the needs of the moment, than in the lies we tell to other human beings. Lying is the royal road to chaos.
2010s, Lying (2011)

Way , Life , Making love

“Some researchers have speculated that religion itself may have played an important role in getting large groups of prehistoric humans to socially cohere. If this is true, we can say that religion has served an important purpose. This does not suggest, however, that it serves an important purpose now.”

Sam Harris

There is, after all, nothing more natural than rape. But no one would argue that rape is good, or compatible with a civil society, because it may have had evolutionary advantages for our ancestors. That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization.
Source: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. 90-91

Religion