Quote

Principle #1: Avoid dangerous people and dangerous places. Principle #2: Do not defend your property. Principle #3: Respond immediately and escape.

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
People
Immediately
Escape
Principle
Avoid
Property
Places
Principles
Respond
Dangerous
Defend

More quotes by Sam Harris

Image
Jesus Christ—who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens—can now be eaten in the form of a cracker
Sam Harris
Image
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
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
From my point of view, compatibilism is a little like saying: a puppet is free so long as it loves its strings.
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 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
It's simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality.
Sam Harris
Image
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
Image
Death is, in some ways, unacceptable. It's just an astonishing fact of our being here that we die but I think worse than that is if we live long enough, we lose everyone we love in this world. I mean people die and disappear, and we're left with this stark mystery: just the sheer not knowing of what happened to them.
Sam Harris
Image
When the stakes are this high- when calling God by the right name can make the difference between eternal happiness and eternal suffering, it is impossible to respect the beliefs of others who don't believe as you do.
Sam Harris
Image
What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.
Sam Harris
Image
An argument can be logically valid, but unsound in that it contains a false premise and, therefore, leads to a false conclusion (e.g., Scientists are smart smart people do not make mistakes therefore, scientists do not make mistakes).
Sam Harris
Image
In my own case, the most inflammatory statements I have ever made are ones that I have written and remain willing to defend.
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
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
Image
I think it [getting a gun] should be like getting a pilot's license. I think you should require training to get a license to have a gun.
Sam Harris
Image
There must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. On this view, some people and cultures will be right (to a greater or lesser degree), and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life.
Sam Harris
Image
We have Christians against Muslims against Jews. They're making incompatible claims on real estate in the Middle East as though God were some kind of omniscient real estate broker parsing out parcels of land to his chosen flock. People are literally dying over ancient literature.
Sam Harris
Image
The men who committed the atrocities of September 11 were certainly not cowards, as they were repeatedly described in the Western media, nor were they lunatics in any ordinary sense. They were men of faith—perfect faith, as it turns out—and this, it must finally be acknowledged, is a terrible thing to be.
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