Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Sam Harris (American Neuroscientist, Atheist, Author)

Sam Harris (b.1967,) fully Samuel Benjamin Harris, is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and public intellectual. He is a prominent atheist and critic of religion.

Born in Los Angeles, Harris left his undergraduate course at Stanford University and traveled to India and Nepal to study meditation with Buddhist and Hindu teachers. He returned to Stanford eleven years later, got a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 2000. Harris received a PhD degree in cognitive neuroscience in 2009 from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Harris began writing his first book, The End of Faith (2004,) after the September 11 attacks. It appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for 33 weeks and helped launch the New Atheists movement, which was then extended by a sequence of antireligious books by others of the “Four Horsemen of New Atheism”—Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett—and others.

Harris’s other prominent works include Letter to a Christian Nation (2006,) The Moral Landscape (2010,) Lying (2011,) Free Will (2012,) and Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion (2014.) Harris is a proponent of secular meditation practices and developed a meditation practice based on the Vipassana and Dzogchen approaches.

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Sam Harris

Unlike statements of fact, which require no further work on our part, lies must be continually protected from collisions with reality.
Sam Harris

The truth is that most people are simply too distracted by their thoughts to have the selflessness of consciousness pointed out directly. And even if they are ready to glimpse it, they are unlikely to understand its significance.
Sam Harris

To agree to keep a secret is to assume a burden.
Sam Harris

Honesty is a gift we can give to others. It is also a source of power and an engine of simplicity. Knowing that we will attempt to tell the truth, whatever the circumstances, leaves us with little to prepare for. We can simply be ourselves.
Sam Harris

You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.
Sam Harris

Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected. But the one lied to almost never shares this view. The moment we consider our dishonesty from the point of view of those we lie to, we recognize that we would feel betrayed if the roles were reversed.
Sam Harris

Sincerity, authenticity, integrity, mutual understanding—these and other sources of moral wealth are destroyed the moment we deliberately misrepresent our beliefs, whether or not our lies are ever discovered.
Sam Harris

Faith, if it is ever right about anything, is right by accident.
Sam Harris

By lying, we deny others a view of the world as it is. Our dishonesty not only influences the choices they make, it often determines the choices they can make—and in ways we cannot always predict. Every lie is a direct assault upon the autonomy of those we lie to.
Sam Harris

Your life doesn’t get any better than your mind is: You might have wonderful friends, perfect health, a great career, and everything else you want, and you can still be miserable. The converse is also true: There are people who basically have nothing—who live in circumstances that you and I would do more or less anything to avoid—who are happier than we tend to be because of the character of their minds. Unfortunately, one glimpse of this truth is never enough. We have to be continually reminded of it.
Sam Harris

If our well-being depends upon the interaction between events in our brains and events in the world, and there are better and worse ways to secure it, then some cultures will tend to produce lives that are more worth living than others; some political persuasions will be more enlightened than others; and some world views will be mistaken in ways that cause needless human misery.
Sam Harris

Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us unwilling to criticize ideas that are increasingly maladaptive and patently ridiculous.
Sam Harris

People lie so that others will form beliefs that are not true. The more consequential the beliefs—that is, the more a person’s well-being demands a correct understanding of the world or of other people’s opinions—the more consequential the lie.
Sam Harris

If, like many people, you tend to be vaguely unhappy much of the time, it can be very helpful to manufacture a feeling of gratitude by simply contemplating all the terrible things that have not happened to you, or to think of how many people would consider their prayers answered if they could only live as you are now.
Sam Harris

You are not in control of your mind because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts.
Sam Harris

To lie is to intentionally mislead others when they expect honest communication.
Sam Harris

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.
Sam Harris

Honest people are a refuge: You know they mean what they say; you know they will not say one thing to your face and another behind your back; you know they will tell you when they think you have failed—and for this reason their praise cannot be mistaken for mere flattery.
Sam Harris

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