Sam Harris

“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.”

“Just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim Algebra, we will see tht there is no such thing as Christian or Muslim morality.”

“Are you really surprised by the endurance of religion? What ideology is likely to be more durable than one that conforms, at every turn, to our powers of wishful thinking? Hope is easy; knowledge is hard. Science is the one domain in which we human beings make a truly heroic effort to counter our innate biases and wishful thinking. Science is the one endeavor in which we have developed a refined methodology for separating what a person hopes is true from what he has good reason to believe. The methodology isn't perfect, and the history of science is riddled with abject failures of scientific objectivity. But that is just the point-these have been failures of science, discovered and corrected by-what, religion? No, by good science.”

“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?”

“It is always now”

“Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world - and there clearly are - then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.”

“We should reserve the notion of 'morality' for the ways in which we can affect one another's experience for better or worse. Some people use the term 'morality' differently, of course, but I think we have a scientific responsibility to focus the conversation so as to make it most useful.”

“במשך שנים רבות, מדיניות החוץ של ארצות הברית במזרח התיכון עוצבה, לפחות בחלקה, על ידי אינטרסים של קנאים נוצרים לגבי המשך קיומה של מדינה יהודית. נוצרים קנאים תומכים במדינת ישראל משום שהם מאמינים כי התגבשותו הסופית של הכוח היהודי בארץ הקודש - ובעיקר בניית בית המקדש - תוביל להתגלות השנייה של ישו ולהשמדתם הסופית של היהודים.”

“יש לנו כאן נוצרים נגד מוסלמים נגד יהודים. הם מעלים טענות סותרות בנוגע לבעלות על נדל"ן במזרח התיכון, כאילו שאלוהים הוא סוג של מתווך נדל"ן כל-יודע אשר מעניק אדמות לשבט הנבחר שלו. בני אדם מתים כאן בגלל ספרות עתיקה.”

“אין מקום בספרי הדתות בו אלוהים אומר 'תשמעו, כאשר תגיעו לעולם החדש ותפתחו את שלוש הרשויות של הממשל ותהיה לכם חברה מתורבתת, תוכלו להשליך את כל הברבריות שהמלצתי עליה בספריי הראשונים'.”

“אתאיזם הוא רק אמצעי לפתיחת הדרך אל דיונים טובים יותר.”

“The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.”

“Any conception of human well-being you could plausibly have, the Taliban patently fails to maximize it.”

“There's no way to reconcile Islam with Christianity. This difference of opinion admits of compromise as much as a coin toss does.”

“There is never a moment where I find Trump persuasive. When I look at him I see a man without any inner life. I see the most superficial person on Earth. This is a guy who has been totally hollowed out by greed and self regard and delusion. The way he talks about himself; if I caught some sort of brain virus and I started talking about myself the way Trump talks about himself, I would throw myself out a fucking window. That barely overstates it. Do you remember that scene at the end of the in The Exorcist where the priest is driving out the devil from Linda Blair and the devil comes into him and he just hurls himself out the window to end all the madness? Well, it would be like that. - Sam Harris”

“It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window.”

“If we cannot find our way to a time when most of us are willing to admit that, at the very least, we are not sure whether or not God wrote some of our books, then we need only count the days to Armageddon—because God has given us far many more reasons to kill one another than to turn the other cheek.”

“our moral reasoning is plagued by two illusions. The first illusion can be called the wag-the-dog illusion: We believe that our own moral judgment (the dog) is driven by our own moral reasoning (the tail). The second illusion can be called the wag-theother-dog's-tail illusion: In a moral argument, we expect the successful rebuttal of an opponent's arguments to change the opponent's mind. Such a belief is like thinking that forcing a dog's tail to wag by moving it with your hand will make the dog happy.”

“As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population.”

“It is easy to see what many people, women especially, admire about Sarah Palin. Here is a mother of five who can see the bright side of having a child with Down syndrome and still find the time and energy to govern the state of Alaska.”