Sam Harris Quotes
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One of the enduring pathologies of human culture is the tendency to raise children to fear and demonize other human beings on the basis of religious faith.
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You are either lucky in this department or you aren't-and you cannot make your own luck.
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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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Your mind is all you truly have.
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No culture in human history ever suffered because its people became too reasonable or too desirous of having evidence in defense of their core beliefs.
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I do not choose to choose what I choose.
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Perhaps the most important thing one can discover through the practice of meditation is that the 'self'-the conventional sense of being a subject, a thinker, an experiencer living inside one's head-is an illusion.
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But from a deeper perspective (speaking both objectively and subjectively), thoughts simply arise unauthored and yet author our actions.
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The urge for retribution depends upon our not seeing the underlying causes of human behavior.
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It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: On the one hand, we can't make sense of it in scientific terms; on the other, we feel that we are the authors of our own thoughts and actions.
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You are happily being misunderstood in your use of the word 'God'.
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Death is, in some ways, unacceptable. It’s just an astonishing fact of our being here that we die; but I think worse than that is if we live long enough, we lose everyone we love in this world. I mean people die and disappear, and we’re left with this stark mystery: just the sheer not knowing of what happened to them.
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To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.
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The principal tenet of Jainism is non-harming. Observant Jains will literally not harm a fly. Fundamentalist Jainism and fundamentalist Islam do not have the same consequences, neither logically nor behaviorally.
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From my point of view, compatibilism is a little like saying: a puppet is free so long as it loves its strings.
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I think it getting a gun should be like getting a pilot's license. I think you should require training to get a license to have a gun.
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Atheism is just a way of clearing the space for better conversations.