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A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
Sam Harris
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Sam Harris
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 9
Author
Blogger
Neuroscientist
Philosopher
Podcaster
Writer
LA
California
Samuel Benjamin Harris
Samuel Harris
Puppet
Puppets
Strings
Loves
Free
Long
More quotes by Sam Harris
How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware? We can’t.
Sam Harris
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
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.
Sam Harris
The perpetrators of the Inquisition - the torturers, informers, and those who commanded their actions - were ecclesiastics of one rank or another. They were men of God - popes, bishops, friars, and priests.
Sam Harris
We are all prisoners of our thoughts.
Sam Harris
Nonbelievers like myself stand beside you, dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living. But we stand dumbstruck by you as well--by your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in service to your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary God.
Sam Harris
You cannot take death for apostasy seriously and be working for peace.
Sam Harris
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.
Sam Harris
Although many things can be said in criticism of religious faith, there is no discounting its power. Millions among us, even now, are quite willing to die for our unjustified beliefs, and millions more, it seems, are willing to kill for them.
Sam Harris
I consistently encounter people in academic settings and scientists and journalists who feel that you can't say that anyone is wrong in any deep sense about morality, or with regard to what they value in life. I think this doubt about the application of science and reason to questions of value is really quite dangerous.
Sam Harris
Strange bonds of trust and self-deception tend to grow between journalists and their subjects.
Sam Harris
If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that proves they should value evidence. If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument would you invoke to prove they should value logic?
Sam Harris
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.
Sam Harris
If premarital sex is a sin, who is the victim?
Sam Harris
You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.
Sam Harris
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
How we pay attention to the present moment...determin es the character of our experience and...the quality of our lives.
Sam Harris
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
This is how you play tennis without the net
Sam Harris
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