Quote

The point is that most of what we currently hold sacred is not sacred for any reason other than that it was thought sacred yesterday.

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
Point
Thought
Reason
Currently
Yesterday
Sacred
Hold

More quotes by Sam Harris

Image
You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.
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
The second commandment is Thou shall not construct any graven images. Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity?
Sam Harris
Image
The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It's really no more inflammatory than that.
Sam Harris
Image
Many scientists have been drawn to Buddhism out of a sense that the Western tradition has delivered an impoverished conception of basic, human sanity. In the West, if you speak to yourself out loud all day long, you are considered crazy. But speaking to yourself silently - thinking incessantly - is considered perfectly normal.
Sam Harris
Image
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
Image
Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to knowledge about ourselves and the world.
Sam Harris
Image
This is how you play tennis without the net
Sam Harris
Image
The freedom to think out loud on certain topics, without fear of being hounded into hiding or killed, has already been lost.
Sam Harris
Image
Fundamentalism is only a problem if the fundamentals are a problem
Sam Harris
Image
Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.
Sam Harris
Image
An average Christian, in an average church, listen to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse -- and there have been some extraordinary arrogant scientists.
Sam Harris
Image
George Bush says he speaks to god every day, & Christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to god through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd.
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
All civilized nations must unite in condemnation of a theology that now threatens to destabilize much of the earth.
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
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 God’s teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father’s doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21).
Sam Harris
Image
I think when you say to someone You are fool not to believe in evolution or a fool to believe the universe is 6000 years old. I think that gets translated as You are a fool to think that your daughter who died in a car accident is really in heaven with god.
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
Some ... sexist evil probably predates religion and can be ascribed to our biology, but there is no question that religion promulgates and renders sacrosanct attitudes toward women that would be unseemly in a brachiating ape.
Sam Harris