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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

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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
Making
Backgrounds
Think
Intention
Thinking
Conscious
Exert
Thoughts
Wills
Simply
Unaware
Control
Emerge
Causes
Intentions
Freedom
Background

More quotes by Sam Harris

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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
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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
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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
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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
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You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books.
Sam Harris
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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
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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
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Most people believe that the Creator of the universe wrote (or dictated) one of their books. Unfortunately, there are many books that pretend to divine authorship, and each makes incompatible claims about how we all must live.
Sam Harris
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As a man believes, so he will act.
Sam Harris
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You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.
Sam Harris
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If Jesus does come down out of the clouds like a superhero, Christianity will stand revealed as a science . That will be the science of Christianity.
Sam Harris
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False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.
Sam Harris
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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
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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
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When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. Religion is one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies.
Sam Harris
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How we pay attention to the present moment...determin es the character of our experience and...the quality of our lives.
Sam Harris
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Reason is nothing less than the guardian of love
Sam Harris
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Recently , crowds of thousands gathered throughout the Muslim world - burning European embassies, issuing threats, taking hostages, even killing people - in protest over twelve cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad that were first published in a Danish newspaper. When was the last atheist riot?
Sam Harris
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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
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We are free to burn the Qur’an or any other book, and to criticize Muhammad or any other human being. Let no one forget it.
Sam Harris