Sam Harris Quotes

(American Author)



"The problem with faith, is that it really is a conversation stopper. Faith is a declaration of immunity to the powers of conversation. It is a reason, why you do not have to give reasons, for what you believe."

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"Religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction."

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"We must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it."

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"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings."

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"Words like 'God' and 'Allah' must go the way of 'Apollo' and 'Baal' or they will unmake our world."

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"The Creator who purports to be beyond human judgment is consistently ruled by human passions—jealousy, wrath, suspicion, and the lust to dominate."

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"What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry?"

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"Jesus Christ—who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens—can now be eaten in the form of a cracker."

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"There are ideas within Buddhism that are so incredible as to render the dogma of the virgin birth plausible by comparison."

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"It is time we acknowledged that no real foundation exists within the canons of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any of our other faiths for religious tolerance and religious diversity."

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"By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason equally."

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"A person can be a God-fearing Christian on Sunday and a working scientist come Monday morning, without ever having to account for the partition that seems to have erected itself in his head while he slept."

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"120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer."

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"Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan."

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"The difference between science and religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately consider new evidence and new arguments, and a passionate unwillingness to do so."

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"Those opposed to therapeutic stem-cell research on religious grounds constitute the biological and ethical equivalent of a flat-earth society."

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"Millions of Christians and Muslims now organize their lives around prophetic traditions that will only find fulfillment once rivers of blood begin flowing from Jerusalem."

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"There is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it could well be the highest purpose of human life."

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"Spirituality can be—indeed, must be—deeply rational."

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