Any conception of human well-being you could plausibly have, the Taliban patently fails to maximize it.
Sam HarrisThe problem of human suffering is never too much rational thinking, or too high a demand for evidence. But the solutions are. ... Reason is nothing less than the guardian of love.
Sam HarrisMorality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds - and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe.
Sam Harris120 million of us place the big bang 2,500 years after the Babylonians and Sumerians learned to brew beer.
Sam HarrisNothing guarantees that reasonable people will agree about everything, of course, but the unreasonable are certain to be divided by their dogmas. It is time we recognized that this spirit of mutual inquiry, which is the foundation of all real science, is the very antithesis of religious faith.
Sam HarrisMany scientists have been drawn to Buddhism out of a sense that the Western tradition has delivered an impoverished conception of basic, human sanity. In the West, if you speak to yourself out loud all day long, you are considered crazy. But speaking to yourself silently - thinking incessantly - is considered perfectly normal.
Sam Harris