Sam Harris Quotes

Many people who experience illness imagine that everyone else is blissfully getting on with life in perfect health—and this illusion compounds their suffering.

Cuando decimos la verdad, no tenemos nada a lo que seguir el rastro.

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.

Ceaseless change is an unreliable basis for lasting fulfillment. Realizing this, many people begin to wonder whether a deeper source of well-being exists. Is there a form of happiness beyond the mere repetition of pleasure and avoidance of pain?

My friend Joseph Goldstein, one of the finest vipassana teachers I know, likens this shift in awareness to the experience of being fully immersed in a film and then suddenly realizing that you are sitting in a theater watching a mere play of light on a wall.

If, as I contend throughout this book, all that is good in religion can be had elsewhere — if, for instance, ethical and spiritual experience can be cultivated and talked about without our claiming to know things we manifestly do not know — then all the rest of our religious activity represents, at best, a massive waste of time and energy.

Lewis observes that “for Muslims, no piece of land once added to the realm of Islam can ever be finally renounced.

When you tell the truth, you have nothing to keep track of. The world itself becomes your memory, and if questions arise, you can always point others back to it. You can even reconsider certain facts and honestly change your views. And you can openly discuss your confusion, conflicts, and doubts with all comers. A commitment to the truth is naturally purifying of error.

A rational approach to ethics becomes possible once we realize that questions of right and wrong are really questions about happiness and suffering of sentient creatures

There are other ideologies with which to expunge the last vapors of reasonableness from a society’s discourse, but Islam is undoubtedly one of the best we’ve got.

It really is possible to look for the feeling you are calling “I” and to fail to find it in a way that is conclusive.

We are now in the 21st century: all books, including the Koran, should be fair game for flushing down the toilet without fear of violent reprisal.

invidious comparisons of this kind is to stand convicted of bigotry.

Christ died for your sins; He is the Son of God; All human beings have souls that will be subject to judgment after death.

The deity who stalked the deserts of the Middle East millennia ago - and who seems to have abandoned them to bloodshed in his name ever since - is no one to consult on questions of ethics. Indeed, to judge him on the basis of his works is highly invidious undertaking.