Quotes from Sam Harris

Cuando decimos la verdad, no tenemos nada a lo que seguir el rastro.

The illusion of free will is itself an illusion.

How could this next thought define your subjectivity at all?

The sense, therefore, that we are unified subjects—the unchanging thinkers of thoughts and experiencers of experience—is an illusion. The conventional self is a transitory appearance among transitory appearances, and it vanishes when looked for.

consciousness is never truly confined by what it knows. That which is aware of sadness is not sad. That which is aware of fear is not fearful.

Pero el mentiroso deber recordar lo que dijo, y a quién; y debe cuidarse de mantener las falsedades para el futuro.

Reality is simply the loss of the ego. Destroy the ego by seeking its identity. Because ego is no entity it will automatically vanish and reality will shine forth by itself. This is the direct method, whereas all other methods are done, only retaining the ego. . . . No sadhanas [spiritual practices] are necessary for engaging in this quest.

What you are calling "I" is itself a feeling that arises among the contents of consciousness. Consciousness is prior to it, a mere witness of it, and, therefore, free of it in principle.

Lies beget other lies.

the disparity between Eastern and Western spirituality resembles that found between Eastern and Western medicine—with the arrow of embarrassment pointing in the opposite direction

To say that something is "natural," or that it has conferred an adaptive advantage upon our species, is not to say that it is "good" in the required sense of contributing to human happiness in the present.24 Admittedly, the problem of adjudicating what counts as happiness, and which forms of happiness should supersede others, is difficult—but so is every other problem worth thinking about.

To lie is to erect a boundary between the truth we are living and the perception others have of us.

It is within our capacity to recognize the nature of thoughts, to awaken from the dream of being merely ourselves and, in this way, to become better able to contribute to the well-being of others.

The search for comfort at the expense of truth has never been a motive for religious belief, since all creeds are chock-full of terrible proposals, which are no more comfort to anyone and which the faithful believe despite the pain it causes them, for fear of leaving some dark corner of reality unacknowledged.

Life under the Taliban is, to a first approximation, what millions of Muslims around the world want to impose on the rest of us. They long to establish a society in which—when times are good—women will remain vanquished and invisible, and anyone given to spiritual, intellectual, or sexual freedom will be slaughtered before crowds of sullen, uneducated men.

Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

Antonin Scalia

There is nothing spooky about mindfulness. It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression; improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness.

Indeed, it seems to me that the more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral….

You can't get enough of your favorite meal until, in the next moment, you find you are so stuffed as to nearly require the attention of a surgeon—and yet, by some quirk of physics, you still have room for dessert.

On one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow one's own advice. However, there are deeper insights to be had about the nature of our minds. Unfortunately, they have been discussed entirely in the context of religion and, therefore, have been shrouded in fallacy and superstition for all of human history.

A rational approach to ethics becomes possible once we realize that questions of right and wrong are really questions about happiness and suffering of sentient creatures

las investigaciones indican que los mentirosos confían menos en aquellos a quienes mienten que si no les mintieran; y cuanto más dañinas son sus mentiras, menos confían en sus víctimas, e incluso menos les agradan. Parece que los mentirosos suelen despreciar a las personas a las que mienten para preservar su ego e interpretar que su conducta está justificada.

Faith is what credulity becomes when it finally achieves escape velocity from the constraints of terrestrial discourse—constraints like reasonableness, internal coherence, civility, and candor. However