Quotes from Sam Harris

I can think of no right more fundamental than the right to peacefully steward the contents of one's own consciousness.

Consciousness is the basis of both the examined and the unexamined life.

Even if you don't believe such a homunculus exists—perhaps because you believe, on the basis of science, that you are identical to your body and brain rather than a ghostly resident therein—you almost certainly feel like an internal self in almost every waking moment. And yet, however one looks for it, this self is nowhere to be found.

It is time we realized that crimes without victims are like debts without creditors. They do not even exist.

literal reading of the Old Testament not only permits but requires heretics to be put to death.

The point, of course, is that science increasingly allows us to identify aspects of our minds that cause us to deviate from norms of factual and moral reasoning—norms which, when made explicit, are generally acknowledged to be valid by all parties.

Open the Koran, which is perfect in its every syllable

Biblical worldview.

Well, let's make it simpler. Let's say we found a culture on an island somewhere that was removing the eyeballs of every third child. Would you then agree that we had found a culture that was not perfectly maximizing human well-being?

Meditation can open the mind to a similar range of conscious states, but far less haphazardly. If LSD is like being strapped to a rocket, learning to meditate is like gently raising a sail. Yes, it is possible, even with guidance, to wind up someplace terrifying, and some people probably shouldn't spend long periods in intensive practice. But the general effect of meditation training is of settling ever more fully into one's own skin and suffering less there.

Ceaseless change is an unreliable basis for lasting fulfillment. Realizing this, many people begin to wonder whether a deeper source of well-being exists. Is there a form of happiness beyond the mere repetition of pleasure and avoidance of pain?

THIS is all desperately tedious

How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives.

We spend our lives telling ourselves the story of past and future, while the reality of the present goes largely unexplored. Now we live in ignorance of the freedom and simplicity of consciousness, prior to the arising of thought.

Uma das primeiras coisas que se aprende ao praticar meditação é que nada é tedioso em si — na verdade, o tédio é simplesmente falta de atenção. Preste atenção o suficiente, e a mera experiência de respirar pode recompensar meses ou anos de vigilância constante.

Such mockery of religious faith is inexcusable.

When you find another person annoying, sexually attractive, or inadvertently funny, you are experiencing the percolations of System 1. The heroic efforts you make to conceal these feelings out of politeness are the work of System 2.

By lying, we deny our friends access to reality9—and their resulting ignorance often harms them in ways we did not anticipate. Our friends may act on our falsehoods, or fail to solve problems that could have been solved only on the basis of good information. Rather often, to lie is to infringe on the freedom of those we care about.

divine authority behind government

I invite you to try to think of a source of value that has absolutely nothing to do with the (actual or potential) experience of conscious beings. Take a moment to think about what this would entail: whatever this alternative is, it cannot affect the experience of any creature (in this life or in any other). Put this thing in a box, and what you have in that box is—it would seem, by definition—the least interesting thing in the universe.

Sayyid Qutb

When the members of the "Heaven's Gate" cult failed to spot the spacecraft they knew must be trailing the comet Hale-Bopp, they returned the $4,000 telescope they had bought for this purpose, believing it to be defective.

As an undergraduate at Stanford, I took a seminar that profoundly changed my life. It was called "The Ethical Analyst," and it was conducted in the form of a Socratic dialogue by an extraordinarily gifted professor, Ronald A. Howard.1 Our discussion focused on a single question of practical ethics: Is it wrong to lie?

they believed that they would go straight to paradise for doing so.