Quotes from Sam Harris

the only differences between a cult and a religion are the numbers of adherents and the degree to which they are marginalized by the rest of society. Scientology

Some pleasures are intrinsically ethical—feelings like love, gratitude, devotion, and compassion. To inhabit these states of mind is, by definition, to be brought into alignment with others.

To speak of sports as a generic activity makes it impossible to discuss what athletes actually do or the physical attributes required to do it. What do all sports have in common apart from breathing? Not much. The term religion is hardly more useful.

The paradox is that we can become wiser and more compassionate and live more fulfilling lives by refusing to be who we have tended to be in the past. But we must also relax, accepting things as they are in the present, as we strive to change ourselves.

Choices, efforts, intentions, and reasoning influence our behavior—but they are themselves part of a chain of causes that precede conscious awareness and over which we exert no ultimate control.

every religion preaches the truth of propositions for which it has no evidence.

As long as a Christian believes that only his baptized brethren will be saved on the Day of Judgment, he cannot possibly "respect" the beliefs of others, for he knows that the flames of hell have been stoked by these very ideas and await their adherents even now.

House of Islam

My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal and indelible.

Luckily, this shame is not indelible and can be readily expunged with her blood.

The human mind does, in fact, contain vast expanses that few of us ever discover.

But it can be liberating to see how thoughts pull the levers of emotion—and how negative emotions in turn set the stage for patterns of thinking that keep them active and coloring one's mind.

President Bush recently decided to cut off funding to any overseas family-planning group that provides information on abortion.

The jail sentences for these men, if they are prosecuted at all, are invariably short. Many

Where is the freedom in this? Yes, you are free to do what you want even now. But where did your desires come from?

Can we say that Middle Eastern men who are murderously obsessed with female sexual purity actually love their wives, daughters, and sisters less than American or European men do?

Values are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures

A person could, for instance, distinguish his bodily movements from those of another person without feeling a sense of self at all, for to do so merely requires that he distinguish one body (as an object) from another.

The truth is that most of our modern values are antithetical to the specific teachings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And where we do find these values expressed in our holy books, they are almost never best expressed there.

There is no doubt that certain beliefs are incompatible with love, and this notion of "honor" is among them.

Lord's work

Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever.

Few concepts have offered greater scope for human cruelty than the idea of an immortal soul that stands independent of all material influences, ranging from genes to economic systems. 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 then came the insight that irrevocably transformed my sense of how good human life could be. I was feeling boundless love for one of my best friends, and I suddenly realized that if a stranger had walked through the door at that moment, he or she would have been fully included in this love. Love was at bottom impersonal—and deeper than any personal history could justify. Indeed, a transactional form of love—I love you because. . . —now made no sense at all.