Quotes by Sam Harris

“The realistic goal to be attained through spiritual practice is not some permanent state of enlightenment that admits of no further efforts, but a capacity to be free in this moment, in the midst o...”

“Twenty percent of Americans describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. Although the claim seems to annoy believers and atheists equally, separating spirituality from religion is a perfectl...”

“Habitual identification with discursive thought is the source of human suffering”

“Our habitual failure to recognise thought as thought, our habitual identification with discursive thought, is the primary source of human suffering.”

“Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything...”

“Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, 'atheism' is a term that should not even exist. No one needs to identify himself ...”

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

“Losing a belief in free will has not made me fatalisticin fact, it has increased my feelings of freedom. My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal and indelible. There is no telling how much...”

“The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national...”

“We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of Gods teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding...”

“According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. gove...”

“In the year 2006, a person can have sufficient intellectual and material resources to build a nuclear bomb and still believe that he will get seventy-two virgins in Paradise.”

“Could there be any doubt that the Jews would seek to harm the Son of God again, knowing that his body was now readily accessible in the form of defenseless crackers?”

“The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it, by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies...”

“If we cannot find our way to a time when most of us are willing to admit that, at the very least, we are not sure whether or not God wrote some of our books, then we need only count the days to Arm...”

“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. The consciousness that animates us is itself ...”

“You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.”

“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.”

“I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.”

“We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That's it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.”