Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.
most of us spend our time seeking happiness and security without acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search. Each of us is looking for a path… - Sam Harris
" "most of us spend our time seeking happiness and security without acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search. Each of us is looking for a path back to the present: We are trying to find good enough reasons to be satisfied now. Acknowledging that this is the structure of the game we are playing allows us to play it differently. How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives. Mystics and contemplatives have made this claim for ages — but a growing body of scientific research now bears it out.
English
Collect this quote
About Sam Harris
Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American author, philosopher, public intellectual, and neuroscientist, as well as the co-founder and CEO of Project Reason. He is the author of The End of Faith (2004), which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction in 2005 and appeared on The New York Times best seller list for 33 weeks, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), The Moral Landscape (2010), Lying (2011), Free Will (2012), and most recently Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (2014).
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Birth Name:
Samuel Benjamin Harris
Alternative Names:
Samuel Harris
Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.
Shorter versions of this quote
I’m not denying the importance of achieving one’s goals, maintaining one’s health, or keeping one’s children clothed and fed — but most of us spend our time seeking happiness and security without acknowledging the underlying purpose of our search. Each of us is looking for a path back to the present: We are trying to find good enough reasons to be satisfied now.
Limited Time Offer
Premium members can get their quote collection automatically imported into their Quotewise collections.
Additional quotes by Sam Harris
What is the meaning of life? What is our purpose on earth? These are some of the great, false questions of religion. We need not answer them, for they are badly posed, but we can live our answers all the same. At a minimum, we can create the conditions for human flourishing in this life — the only life of which any of us can be certain. That means we should not terrify our children with thoughts of hell or poison them with hatred for infidels. We should not teach our sons to consider women their future property or convince our daughters that they are property even now. And we must decline to tell our children that human history began with bloody magic and will end with bloody magic in a glorious war between the righteous and the rest.
We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it. And, again, I wouldn’t put someone who looks like me entirely outside the bull’s-eye (after all, what would Adam Gadahn look like if he cleaned himself up?) But there are people who do not stand a chance of being jihadists, and TSA screeners can know this at a glance.
Loading...