Sam Harris is the New York Times bestselling author of five novels. Among his writings is The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance (with Maajid Nawaz).
The End of Faith won the PEN Award for Nonfiction in 2005. His writing and public lectures span a wide range of issues, including neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human aggression, and reason, but they all center on how a better understanding of ourselves and the world is altering our notion of how we should live.
Works
Sam’s work has been translated into over 20 languages and has been featured in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Rolling Stone, and several other publications. He has written for publications such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and The Annals of Neurology. He also hosts the Making Sense Podcast, which was named an “iTunes Outstanding” podcast by Apple and earned a Webby Award for best podcast in the Science & Education area.
Social Media
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Inspiring Talks by Sam Harris
Interview
Notable quotes
- “The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.”
- “In fact, “atheism” is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a “non-astrologer” or a “non-alchemist.” We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.”
- “I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.”
- “We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That’s it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.”
- “Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?”
- “If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?”
- “If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures.”
- “Theology is ignorance with wings.”
- “Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn’t care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.”
- “It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.”
- “What I’m asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.”