Quotes by Sam Harris

Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transcends cultural, national, and political boundaries. You dont have American science versus Canadian science versus Japanese science.

I dont think theres an interesting boundary between philosophy and science. Science is totally beholden to philosophy. There are philosophical assumptions in science and theres no way to get around that.

Science does not limit itself merely to what is currently verifiable. But it is interested in questions that are potentially verifiable (or, rather, falsifiable).

As a parent, its my responsibility to equip my child to do this - to grieve when grief is necessary and to realize that life is still profoundly beautiful and worth living despite the fact that we inevitably lose one another and that life ends, and we dont know what happens after death.

Religion provides the only story that is fundamentally consoling in the face of the worst possible experiences - the death of a parent, for instance. In fact, many religions take away the problem entirely, because their adherents ostensibly believe that theyre going to be reunited with everyone they love, and death is an illusion.

My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on their own. Thats not to say that all religious people are lunatics or idiots. Its anything but that.

To speak specifically of our problem with the Muslim world, we are meandering into a genuine clash of civilizations, and were deluding ourselves with euphemisms. Were talking about Islam being a religion of peace thats been hijacked by extremists. If ever there were a religion thats not a religion of peace, it is Islam.

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

Religion has convinced us that theres something else entirely other than concerns about suffering. Theres concerns about what God wants, theres concerns about whats going to happen in the afterlife.

The usefulness of religion - the fact that it gives life meaning, that it makes people feel good - is not an argument for the truth of any religious doctrine. Its not an argument that its reasonable to believe that Jesus really was born of a virgin or that the Bible is the perfect word of the creator of the universe.

Its simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.

It is difficult to think of anything more important than providing the best education possible for our children. They will develop the next technologies, medical cures, and global industries, while mitigating their unintended effects, or they will fail to do these things and consign us all to oblivion.

Were right to say that a culture that cant tolerate free speech is... there are a wide range of positive human experiences that are not available in that culture. And were right to want those experiences.

Nothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonable are certain to be divided by their dogmas. It is time we recognized that this spirit of mutual inquiry, which is the foundation of all real science, is the very antithesis of religious faith.

Strange bonds of trust and self-deception tend to grow between journalists and their subjects.

One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced.

As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population.

“The problem with religion, because its been sheltered from criticism, is that it allows people to believe en masse what only idiots or lunatics could believe in isolation.”

“Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name.”

“What are the chances that we will one day discover that DNA has absolutely nothing to do with inheritance? They are effectively zero.”