Quotes from Sam Harris

Consciousness is simply the light by which the contours of mind and body are known. It is that which is aware of feelings such as joy, regret, amusement, and despair. It can seem to take their shape for a time, but it is possible to recognize that it never quite does. In fact, we can directly experience that consciousness is never improved or harmed by what it knows. Making this discovery, again and again, is the basis of spiritual life.

Primarily, that means learning to recognize thoughts as thoughts—as transient appearances in consciousness—and to no longer be distracted by them, if only for short periods of time.

Ronald Reagan

But faith is still the mother of hatred here, as it is wherever people define their moral identities in religious terms.

mother is promptly congratulated by hundreds of her neighbors.

Funny or not, the story reveals something distasteful about Sita: She will lie when it suits her needs.

Jerry Falwell

In the best case, notions of God's love and grace provide some relief—but the central message of these faiths is that each of us is separate from, and in relationship to, a divine authority who will punish anyone who harbors the slightest doubt about His supremacy.

The teachings of Buddhism, and of Eastern spirituality generally, focus on the primacy of the mind.

We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them "religious"; otherwise, they are likely to be called "mad," "psychotic," or "delusional

My goal in this chapter and the next is to convince you that the conventional sense of self is an illusion—and that spirituality largely consists in realizing this, moment to moment.

Hal Lindsey

Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity ? a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible. When foisted upon each generation anew, it renders us incapable of realizing just how much of our world has been unnecessarily ceded to a dark and barbarous past.

a significant percentage of the world's Muslims believe that the men who brought down the World Trade Center are now seated at the right hand of God

what is startling about the notion of a victimless crime is that even when the behavior in question is genuinely victimless, its criminality is still affirmed by those who are eager to punish it.

One can traverse the Eastern paths simply by becoming interested in the nature of one's own mind—especially in the immediate causes of psychological suffering—and by paying closer attention to one's experience in every present moment. There is, in truth, nothing one need believe.

We spend our lives lost in thought. The question is, what should we make of this fact? In the West, the answer has been "Not much." In the East, especially in contemplative traditions like those of Buddhism, being distracted by thought is understood to be the very wellspring of human suffering.

Faith is like a pickpocket who loans a person his own money on generous terms.

Most Muslims who commit atrocities are explicit about their desire to get to paradise.

The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy.

George Bush says he speaks to god every day, and Christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to god through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd.

While feeling love for others is surely one of the greatest source of happiness, it entails a very deep concern for the happiness and suffering of those we love. Our own search for happiness, therefore, provides a rationale for self-sacrifice and self-denial.

we should observe just how deeply implausible the Koranic paradise is.

There is no stable self that is carried along from one moment to the next.