Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sam Harris
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 9
Author
Blogger
Neuroscientist
Philosopher
Podcaster
Writer
LA
California
Samuel Benjamin Harris
Samuel Harris
Religion
Anything
Lunatics
Believe
Idiots
People
Allows
Idiot
Concern
Millions
Religious

More quotes by Sam Harris

Image
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 emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.
Sam Harris
Image
Hope is easy knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe.
Sam Harris
Image
As a man believes, so he will act.
Sam Harris
Image
The moral landscape is the framework I use for thinking about questions of morality and human values in universal terms.
Sam Harris
Image
Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of 'spirituality' or 'mysticism' to be synonymous with mental illness, conscious fraud, or self-deception. I have argued elsewhere that this is a problem - because millions of people have had experiences for which 'spiritual' and 'mystical' seem the only terms available.
Sam Harris
Image
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.
Sam Harris
Image
One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced.
Sam Harris
Image
We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it.
Sam Harris
Image
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.
Sam Harris
Image
Human well-being is not a random phenomenon. It depends on many factors - ranging from genetics and neurobiology to sociology and economics. But, clearly, there are scientific truths to be known about how we can flourish in this world. Wherever we can have an impact on the well-being of others, questions of morality apply.
Sam Harris
Image
Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings.
Sam Harris
Image
When someone like myself points out the rather obvious and compelling evidence that God is cruel and unjust, because he visits suffering on innocent people of a scope and scale that would embarrass the most ambitious psychopath, we're told that? God is mysterious.
Sam Harris
Image
There is no reason whatsoever to think that Buddhism can compete successfully with the relentless evangelizing of Christianity and Islam. Nor should it try to.
Sam Harris
Image
The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence.
Sam Harris
Image
The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.
Sam Harris
Image
We are all prisoners of our thoughts.
Sam Harris
Image
People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power.
Sam Harris
Image
Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds - and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe.
Sam Harris
Image
Each increment of knowledge imparted in this way is so satisfying-and one's ignorance at every stage so consequential-that the process of learning BJJ can become remarkably addictive. I have never experienced anything quite like it.
Sam Harris
Image
From my point of view, compatibilism is a little like saying: a puppet is free so long as it loves its strings.
Sam Harris