Quotes by Sam Harris

We have barely emerged from centuries of barbarism. Its not a surprise that there are shocking inequities in this world. It is hard work to climb down out of the trees and walk upright,and build a viable global civilization when you start with technology that is made of rocks and sticks and fur. This is a project, and progress is dificult.

We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.

As many critics of religion have pointed out, the notion of a creator poses an immediate problem of an infinite regress. If God created the universe, what created God? To say that God, by definition, is uncreated simply begs the question. Any being capable of creating a complex world promises to be very complex himself. As the biologist Richard Dawkins has observed repeatedly, the only natural process we know of that could produce a being capable of designing things is evolution.

You cant take credit for your talents, but it matters that you use them. You cant really be blamed for your weaknesses, but it matters that you correct them. So pride and shame dont make a lot of sense, in the final analysis, but they werent much fun anyway.

In Islam, it is the moderate who is left to split hairs,because the basic thrust of the doctrine is undeniable: convert, sub-jugate, or kill unbelievers; kill apostates; and conquer the world.

The truth, however, is that most Muslims appear to be fundamental-ist in the Western sense of the word—in that even moderateapproaches to Islam generally consider the Koran to be the literal andinerrant word of the one true God. The difference between funda-mentalists and moderates—and certainly the difference between allextremists and moderates—is the degree to which they see politicaland military action to be intrinsic to the practice of their faith. In anycase, people who believe that Islam must inform every dimension ofhuman existence, including politics and law, are now generally callednot fundamentalists or extremists but, rather, Islamists.

even if Noam Chomsky were right about everything, the Islamic doctrines related to martyrdom, jihad, blasphemy, apostasy, the rights of women and homosexuals, etc. would still present huge problems for the emergence of a global civil society (and these are problems quite unlike those presented by similar tenets in other faiths, for reasons that I have explained at length elsewhere and touch on only briefly here). And any way in which I might be biased or blinded by “the religion of the state,” or any other form of cultural indoctrination, has absolutely no relevance to the plight of Shiites who have their mosques, weddings, and funerals bombed by Sunni extremists, or to victims of rape who are beaten, imprisoned, or even killed as “adulteresses” throughout the Muslim world. I hope it goes without saying that the Afghan girls who even now are risking their lives by merely learning to read would not be best compensated for their struggles by being handed copies of Chomsky’s books enumerating the sins of the West

Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what so ever.

When we consider that so few generations had passed since thechurch left off disemboweling innocent men before the eyes of theirfamilies, burning old women alive in public squares, and torturingscholars to the point of madness for merely speculating about thenature of the stars, it is perhaps little wonder that it failed to thinkanything had gone terribly amiss in Germany during the war years.

You dont choose to choose what you choose in life!

How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware? We can’t.

Liberals tend to understand that a person can be lucky or unlucky in all matters relevant to his success. Conservatives, however, often make a religious fetish of individualism.Many seem to have absolutely no awareness of how fortunate one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, physically healthy, and not bankrupted in middle age by the illness of a spouse.

We are not self-caused little gods.

What evidence could possibly be put forward to show that one could have acted differently in the past?

The opportunity to decieve others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance of deception casts us onto some of the steepest ethical terrain we ever cross.

By wearing cosmetics a woman seeks to look younger or more beautiful than she otherwise would. Honesty doesnt require that she issue a continuous disclaimer: I see you are looking at my face. Please be aware that I dont look this good first thing in the morning.

Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected.

False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.

While religious tolerance is surely better than religious war, tolerance is not without its liabilities. Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive.

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 to win some very terrible wars in the future.