Quote

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

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
Persons
Theft
Person
Encouragement
Kind
Stealing
Time
False
Motivation
Toward
Purpose
Energy
Steals

More quotes by Sam Harris

Image
How we pay attention to the present moment...determin es the character of our experience and...the quality of our lives.
Sam Harris
Image
We rely on faith only in the context of claims for which there is no sufficient sensory or logical evidence.
Sam Harris
Image
We know enough at this moment to say that the God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation he is unworthy even of man.
Sam Harris
Image
We must continually remind ourselves that there is a difference between what is natural and what is actually good for us.
Sam Harris
Image
You cannot take death for apostasy seriously and be working for peace.
Sam Harris
Image
It seems to me patently obvious that we can no more respect and tolerate vast differences in notions of human well-being than we can respect or tolerate vast differences in the notions about how disease spreads, or in the safety standards of buildings and airplanes.
Sam Harris
Image
And while Protestant reformers broke with Rome on a variety of counts, their treatment of their fellow human beings was no less disgraceful. Public executions were more popular than ever: heretics were still reduced to ash, scholars were tortured and killed for impertinent displays of reason, and fornicators were murdered without a qualm.
Sam Harris
Image
Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to knowledge about ourselves and the world.
Sam Harris
Image
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
Image
Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.
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
To speak specifically of our problem with the Muslim world, we are meandering into a genuine clash of civilizations, and we're deluding ourselves with euphemisms. We're talking about Islam being a religion of peace that's been hijacked by extremists. If ever there were a religion that's not a religion of peace, it is Islam.
Sam Harris
Image
You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.
Sam Harris
Image
What would our world be like if we ceased to worry about 'right' and 'wrong,' or 'good' and 'evil,' and simply acted so as to maximize well-being, our own and that of others? Would we lose anything important?
Sam Harris
Image
There's no way to reconcile Islam with Christianity. This difference of opinion admits of compromise as much as a coin toss does.
Sam Harris
Image
Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.
Sam Harris
Image
Science is the most durable and nondivisive way of thinking about the human circumstance. It transcends cultural, national, and political boundaries. You don't have American science versus Canadian science versus Japanese science.
Sam Harris
Image
It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.
Sam Harris
Image
[I]t is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.
Sam Harris
Image
People who harbor strong convictions without evidence belong at the margins of our societies, not in our halls of power. The only thing we should respect in a person’s faith is his desire for a better life in this world we need never have respected his certainty that one awaits him in the next.
Sam Harris