Quotes from Sam Harris

President Bush

It is time we recognized that all reasonable men and women have a common enemy. It is an enemy so near to us, and so deceptive, that we keep its counsel even as it threatens to destroy the very possibility of human happiness. Our enemy is nothing other than faith itself.

Mentir es confundir intencionadamente a los demás cuando esperan recibir una comunicación honesta.

One of the worst things about breaking the law is that it puts you at odds with an indeterminate number of other people. This is among the many corrosive effects of unjust laws: They tempt peaceful and (otherwise) honest people to lie so as to avoid being punished for behavior that is ethically blameless.

En 1998, el médico Andrew Wakefield publicó un estudio en la revista The Lancet en el que se relacionaba la vacuna del sarampión, las paperas y la rubéola (la conocida como triple vírica) con el autismo. Después, el estudio se consideró un «fraude meticuloso» y se desposeyó a Wakefield de la autorización para ejercer la medicina.

Not even in the right ballpark"? His experience sounds so much like a DMT trip that we are not only in the right ballpark, we are talking about the stitching on the same ball.

These data are unequivocal: we are building a civilization of ignorance.

faith-based initiative

Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin—which seems to justify not only harsh punishment in this life but eternal punishment in the next. And yet, ironically, one of the fears attending our progress in science is that a more complete understanding of ourselves will dehumanize us.

If your best friend were to ask how she could live a better life, you would probably find many useful things to say, and yet you might not live that way yourself. On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow one's own advice.

Consciousness is the prior condition of every experience; the self or ego is an illusory appearance within it; look closely for what you are calling "I," and the feeling of being a separate self will disappear; what remains, as a matter of experience, is a field of consciousness—free, undivided, and intrinsically uncontaminated by its ever-changing contents.

Yes, and the irony is that these liberals don't see that they've abandoned women, gays, freethinkers, public intellectuals, and other powerless people in the Muslim world to a cauldron of violence and intolerance. Rather than support the rights of women and girls to not live as slaves, for instance, Western liberals support the right of theocrats to treat their wives and daughters however they want—and to be spared offensive cartoons in the meantime.

Leaving aside the metaphysics, mythology, and sectarian dogma, what contemplatives throughout history have discovered is that there is an alternative to being continuously spellbound by the conversation we are having with ourselves; there is an alternative to simply identifying with the next thought that pops into consciousness. And glimpsing this alternative dispels the conventional illusion of the self.

Now, I've argued that the motivation for Islamists and jihadists is ideological dogma, fed to them by charismatic recruiters who play on a perceived sense of grievance and an identity crisis. In fact, I believe that four elements exist in all forms of ideological recruitment: a grievance narrative, whether real or perceived; an identity crisis; a charismatic recruiter; and ideological dogma. The

Dr. W. David Hager

The indeterminacy specific to quantum mechanics offers no foothold: If my brain is a quantum computer, the brain of a fly is likely to be a quantum computer, too. Do flies enjoy free will?

Many seem to have absolutely no awareness of how fortunate one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, physically healthy, and not bankrupted in middle age by the illness of a spouse.

And there is something degraded and degrading about many of our habits of attention as we shop, gossip, argue, and ruminate our way to the grave. Perhaps I should speak only for myself here: It seems to me that I spend much of my waking life in a neurotic trance. My experiences in meditation suggest, however, that an alternative exists. It is possible to stand free of the juggernaut of self, if only for moments at a time. Most

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

We do not know what we intend to do until the intention itself arises

Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about.

Yes, a peculiar trait of holding certain symbols as sacred and intimately tied to one's own identity is that they can often become more important than human life. No

The ultimate wisdom of enlightenment, whatever it is, cannot be a matter of having fleeting experiences. The goal of meditation is to uncover a form of well-being that is inherent to the nature of our minds. It must, therefore, be available in the context of ordinary sights, sounds, sensations, and even thoughts. Peak experiences are fine, but real freedom must be coincident with normal waking life.

ONE OF THE most pernicious effects of religion is that it tends to divorce morality from the reality of human and animal suffering.