Top 300 Sam Harris Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Jesus Christ – who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens – can now be eaten in the form of a cracker.”

— Sam Harris

52. “It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window.”

— Sam Harris

53. “Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma.”

— Sam Harris

54. “Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to knowledge about ourselves and the world.”

— Sam Harris

55. “The point is that most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday.”

— Sam Harris

56. “Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.”

— Sam Harris

57. “It is time we recognized that belief is not a private matter; it has never been merely private. In fact, beliefs are scarcely more private than actions are, for every belief is a fount of action in potential.”

— Sam Harris

58. “It is as though a portal in time has opened, and the Christians of the 14th century are pouring into our world.”

— Sam Harris

59. “The truth that we must finally confront is that Islam contains specific notions of martyrdom and jihad that fully explain the character of Muslim violence.”

— Sam Harris

60. “It’s not so much religion per se, it’s false certainty that worries me, and religion just has more than its fair share of false certainty or dogmatism. I’m really concerned when I see people pretending to know things they clearly cannot know.”

— Sam Harris

61. “The most transformative experiences people have – bliss, devotion, self transcendence – are currently anchored to the worst parts of culture and to ways of thinking that merely amplify superstition, self-deception, and conflict.”

— Sam Harris

62. “Let me assure you that my intent is not to offend or merely be provocative. I’m simply worried.”

— Sam Harris

63. “As a man believes, so he will act.”

— Sam Harris

64. “Every moment of the day – indeed, every moment throughout one’s life – offers an opportunity to be relaxed and responsive or to suffer unnecessarily.”

— Sam Harris

65. “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

66. “Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim Algebra, we will see tht there is no such thing as Christian or Muslim morality.”

— Sam Harris

67. “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.”

— Sam Harris

68. “Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance.”

— Sam Harris

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

— Sam Harris

70. “We will see that the greatest problem confronting civilization is not merely religious extremism: rather, it is the larger set of cultural and intellectual accommodations we have made to faith itself.”

— Sam Harris

71. “But it is your mind, rather than circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life.”

— Sam Harris

72. “Just keep your foot on the gas until you run out of road.”

— Sam Harris

73. “Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches.”

— Sam Harris

74. “It is still fashionable to believe that how you organize yourself religiously in this life may matter for eternity. Unless we can erode the prestige of that kind of thinking, we’re not going to be able to undermine these divisions in our world.”

— Sam Harris

75. “It is utterly astonishing how ordinary a book can be and still be thought the product of omniscience.”

— Sam Harris

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

— Sam Harris

77. “Anyone familiar with my work knows that I am extremely critical of all religious faiths.”

— Sam Harris

78. “The reality of your life is always now. And to realize this, we will see, is liberating. In fact, I think there is nothing more important to understand if you want to be happy in this world.”

— Sam Harris

79. “A true spiritual practitioner is someone who has discovered that it is possible to be at ease in the world for no reason, if only for a few moments at a time, and that such ease is synonymous with transcending the apparent boundaries of the self.”

— Sam Harris

80. “Unfortunately, failure enjoys a natural advantage. Wrong answers to any problem outnumber right ones by a wide margin, and it seems that it will always be easier to break things than to fix them.”

— Sam Harris

81. “On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow one’s own advice.”

— Sam Harris

82. “From my point of view, compatibilism is a little like saying: a puppet is free so long as it loves its strings.”

— Sam Harris

83. “The fact that my continuous and public rejection of Christianity does not worry me in the least should suggest to you just how inadequate I think your reasons for being a Christian are.”

— Sam Harris

84. “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 that it presided over the birth of the universe.”

— Sam Harris

85. “My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on their own. That’s not to say that all religious people are lunatics or idiots. It’s anything but that.”

— Sam Harris

86. “Secularism is simply a commitment to keeping religion out of politics and public policy.”

— Sam Harris

87. “120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer.”

— Sam Harris

88. “There is now little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds – and lives – are largely shaped by how we use them.”

— Sam Harris

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

— Sam Harris

90. “You cannot take death for apostasy seriously and be working for peace.”

— Sam Harris

91. “Unreason is now ascendant in the United States – in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government.”

— Sam Harris

92. “The problem that religious moderation poses for all of us is that it does not permit anything very critical to be said about religious literalism.”

— Sam Harris

93. “My mind begins to seem like a video game: I can either play it intelligently, learning more in each round, or I can be killed in the same spot by the same monster, again and again.”

— Sam Harris

94. “To treat others ethically is to act out of concern for their happiness and suffering.”

— Sam Harris

95. “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

96. “Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.”

— Sam Harris

97. “Confusion and suffering may be our birthright, but wisdom and happiness are available.”

— Sam Harris

98. “It is always now.”

— Sam Harris

99. “An average Christian, in an average church, listen to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse – and there have been some extraordinary arrogant scientists.”

— Sam Harris

100. “Honesty is a gift we can give to others. It is also a source of power and an engine of simplicity. Knowing that we will attempt to tell the truth, whatever the circumstances, leaves us with little to prepare for. We can simply be ourselves.”

— Sam Harris