Sam Harris Quotes

Moderates in every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern world. No doubt an obscure truth of economics is at work here: societies appear to become considerably less productive whenever large numbers of people stop making widgets and begin killing their customers and creditors for heresy. The first thing to observe about the moderate's retreat from scriptural literalism is that it draws its inspiration not from scripture but from cultural developments that have rendered many of God's utterances difficult to accept as written.

Your life doesn't get any better than your mind is: You might have wonderful friends, perfect health, a great career, and everything else you want, and you can still be miserable. The converse is also true: There are people who basically have nothing—who live in circumstances that you and I would do more or less anything to avoid—who are happier than we tend to be because of the character of their minds. Unfortunately, one glimpse of this truth is never enough. We have to be continually reminded of it.

There will always be some delay between the first neuropsychological events that kindle my next conscious thought and the thought itself. And even if they weren't — even if all mental states were truly coincident with their underlying brain states — I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know — it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?

Nothing that a Christian and a Muslim can say to each other will render their beliefs mutually vulnerable to discourse, because the very tenets of their faith have immunized them against the power of conversation. Believing strongly, without evidence, they have kicked themselves loose of the world. It is therefore in the very nature of faith to serve as an impediment to further inquiry.

A culture of resisting arrest would be a very bad thing to cultivate given that the only response to such resistance is for the police to increase their use of force.

Happily, the benefits of training in meditation arrive long before mastery does.

Atheism is nothing more than bosses reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.

We spend most of our time seeking to become happy, as if something important needs to be found or accomplished, or otherwise added to our experience in the present moment. We're always solving problems, meeting deadlines, running errands, fulfilling desires, defending opinions, and every implied end to our efforts reveals itself to be a mirage. There is simply no resting place. In some basic sense, we never arrive, and the question of finding meaning in life is a component of this search. We want to be able to tell ourselves a satisfying story about who we've been, and who we are, and who we're becoming. Of course it makes sense to do whatever you can to secure a good life, to find satisfying work, to maintain your health, to create a happy family, but it is also terrifying to have one's wellbeing entirely depend upon the shifting sands of experience and the stories we tell ourselves. The great power of mindfulness is that it can connect you with a sense of wellbeing that is intrinsic to simply being conscious in each moment, and this is a deeper discovery than finding meaning in one's life, though it's entirely compatible with that. Through mindfulness you can discover that whatever you seek to accomplish, you can never truly become happy, you can only be happy...

As human being, we live in a perpetual conversation between conversation and violence; what apart from fundamental willingness to be reasonable, can guarantee that we will keep talking to one another?

Unlike statements of fact, which require no further work on our part, lies must be continually protected from collisions with reality.

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.

This is stressful — and spiritual life is a process of gradually unraveling our confusion and bringing this stress to an end. According to the Buddhist view, by seeing things as they are, we cease to suffer in the usual ways, and our minds can open to states of well-being that are intrinsic to the nature of consciousness.

If you imagine a world of real abundance. Like a world where we built the right AI that's just pulling wealth out of the atmosphere and no one really has to work anymore, because we literally have machines that can build machines that can build machines, that are all powered by sunlight, that do everything better than we can. Now why wouldn't that be some kind of utopia? Well it wouldn't be a utopia because we have these very weird emotions, or many of us do, that make it seem like it would be wrong to spread the wealth around. Most people are living as though they want to live in a world where there's a few trillionaires living in compounds ringed by razor wire, and everyone else is sort of starving to death. It's like a winner take all scenario. And so, we have to find a new ethic whereby people are no longer — their purchase on existence is no longer justified by doing profitable work that other people will pay them for. In a world of true abundance you shouldn't have to work to justify your life. You should be free to enjoy the wealth of the world. If we are going to get to that place, we have to change our ethics around that.

The temptation to start each day with several glazed donuts and to end it with an extramarital affair might be difficult for some people to resist, for reasons that are easily understood in evolutionary terms, but there are surely better ways to maximize one’s long-term well-being.

Honesty can force any dysfunction in your life to the surface. Are you in an abusive relationship? A refusal to lie to others – How did you get that bruise? – would oblige you to come to grips with this situation very quickly. Do you have a problem with drugs or alcohol? Lying is the lifeblood of addiction. If we have no recourse to lies, our lives can unravel only so far without others noticing.

Telling the truth can also reveal ways in which we want to grow but haven’t.