Quotes from Sam Harris

But you seem to have a very strong intuition, which I share, that we should consider honesty to be a nearly ironclad principle, because it is to everyone's advantage so much of the time, and it allows us to live the kinds of lives and maintain the kinds of relationships we want to have.

Britain has become a net exporter of Islamism and jihadism. My former Islamist group didn't exist in Pakistan until we exported it from Britain.

we are free to interpret and reinterpret the meaning of our lives.

On some occasions the only people making accurate claims about the motivations of Islamists and jihadists are themselves dangerous bigots. That's terrifying.

Our system of justice should reflect an understanding that any of us could have been dealt a very different hand in life. In fact, it seems immoral not to recognize just how much luck is involved in morality itself.

This is not to say that everyone should take psychedelics. As I will make clear below, these drugs pose certain dangers. Undoubtedly, some people cannot afford to give the anchor of sanity even the slightest tug.

One must be able to pay attention closely enough to glimpse what consciousness is like between thoughts—that is, prior to the arising of the next one. Consciousness does not feel like a self.

But our pleasures are, by their very nature, fleeting. If we enjoy some great professional success, our feelings of accomplishment remain vivid and intoxicating for an hour, or perhaps a day, but then they subside.

Ingesting a powerful dose of a psychedelic drug is like strapping oneself to a rocket without a guidance system. One might wind up somewhere worth going, and, depending on the compound and one's "set and setting," certain trajectories are more likely than others. But however methodically one prepares for the voyage, one can still be hurled into states of mind so painful and confusing as to be indistinguishable from psychosis.

It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been "hijacked" by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the literature of the hadith, which recounts the sayings and actions of the Prophet.

The question is, do you really want to know what other people think about you—about your talents and prospects—or do you want to be deceived about all that?

And yet, thinkers far more sober than Baudrillard view the events of September 11 as a consequence of American foreign policy.

Anyone who believes that God is watching us from beyond the stars will feel that punishing peaceful men and women for their private pleasure is perfectly reasonable.

We have this kind of shibboleth which says: what wasn't reasoned into existence can't be reasoned out. The truth I think is rather much closer to this: that people are making desperate efforts, rather heroic efforts, to be reasonable, to have a coherent worldview, and when those efforts become too costly or too embarrassing… dogma loses.

Your capacity to be offended isn't something that I or anyone else needs to respect. It isn't something that you should respect. In fact, it's something you should be on your guard for.

We Muslims must get used to the fact that people will criticize our religion, just as we criticize everyone else's religion for not being "true." Some people will choose to leave the faith, and we Muslims will need to come to terms with this, and to understand how to treat ex-Muslims not just with civility but with the utmost respect. Critiquing Islam, critiquing any idea, is not bigotry. "Islamophobia" is a troubled and inherently unhelpful term. Yes

religious beliefs are simply beyond the scope of rational discourse.

Given the magnitude of the real problems that confront us—terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the spread of infectious disease, failing infrastructure, lack of adequate funds for education and health care, etc.—our war on sin is so outrageously unwise as to almost defy rational comment.

Despite our attachment to the notion of free will, most of us know that disorders of the brain can trump the best intentions of the mind.

It isn't enough to know, in the abstract, that thoughts continually arise or that one is thinking at this moment, for such knowledge is itself mediated by thoughts that are arising unrecognized. It is the identification with these thoughts—that is, the failure to recognize them as they spontaneously appear in consciousness—that produces the feeling of "I." One

My view is that no idea is above scrutiny, and no people are beneath dignity.

I want to confront these issues head-on. I wish other Muslims would confront them as well, and have conversations with the likes of you and Ayaan, because that's what's needed. It's how we will resolve all this.

After all, there is an enormous difference between being hostage to one's thoughts and being freely and nonjudgmentally aware of life in the present.

Unfortunately, expressing such criticism places the nonbeliever at the margins of society. By merely being in touch with reality, he appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.