Sam Harris Quotes

This people [the Puritans], who in England could not bear being chastised with rods, had no sooner got free from their fetters than they scourged their fellow refugees [Quakers] with scorpions; though the absurdity, as well as the injustice of such a proceeding in them might stare them in the face!

There is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.

The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motive.

The slayers of the heretics are the worst heretics of all.

If my son were to oppose the Catholic Church, I myself would carry the faggots to burn him.

… they shed the blood of Christians like that of the pagans

No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame.

[Spanish] unreasoning religious ardor culminated in the Inquisition, established for the purpose of securing the supreme good of unblemished purity and uniformity of belief. Nothing was allowed to stand in the way of this, and no sacrifice was deemed too great for its accomplishment. All officials, from the king downward, were sworn to its support, and the sinister influence which it exercised was proportioned to the enormous power which it wielded.

We came down on them like a flood! We went out among their cities! We tore down the idol-temples, We shat on the Buddha's head!

Is it really true that religion makes people more kindly, generous, or loving? History tends to disprove this. The worst wars, the most vicious Inquisitions, the cruelest pogroms and persecutions, were both fomented and supported by religion.

In all places, and in all times, those religionists who have believed too much have been more inclined to violence and persecution than those who have believed too little.

Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions... Man, far from being freed from his natural passions, was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and much more disappointing.

In the name of religion many great and fine deeds have been performed. In the name of religion also, thousands and millions have been killed, and every possible crime has been committed.

Each of the seventeen tribunals during a long period burned annually, on an average, ten miserable beings!

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

As a reward for their efforts, however, those early Christians were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured and crucified. Every conceivable method was used to stop them from talking.

Any body of men who believe in hell will persecute whenever they have the power.

Religion is as much a living spring of violence today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in Palestine (Jews versus Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians versus Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians versus Bosnian and Albanian Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants versus Catholics), Kashmir (Muslims versus Hindus), Sudan (Muslims versus Christians and animists), Nigeria (Muslims versus Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea (Muslims versus Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists versus Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims versus Timorese Christians), Iran and Iraq (Shiite versus Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians versus Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis versus Catholic and Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. In these places religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in the last 10 years.

Over the course of history many religions have fallen victim to violent interpretations.

It is hard to imagine, considering the inherent silliness, cruelty and superstition of the human race, how it has contrived to last as long as it has. The witch-hunting, the torturing, the gullibility, the massacres, the intolerance, the wild futility of human behaviour over the centuries is hardly credible. And the laws, as they stand today, are almost inconceivably stupid. With all this brilliant scientific knowledge of atom splitting and nuclear physics, etc., we are still worshipping at different shrines, imprisoning homosexuals, imposing unnecessary and completely irrelevant restrictions on each other. Hearts can be withdrawn from human beasts, dead hearts, and, after a little neat manipulation, popped back again as good as new. The skies can be conquered. Sputniks can whiz round and round the globe and be controlled and guided. People are still genuflecting before crucifixes and Virgin Marys, still persecuting other people for being coloured or Jewish or in some way different from what they apparently should be. There are wars being waged at this very moment in Indonesia, Algeria, the Middle East, Cyprus, etc. The Pope still makes pronouncements against birth control. The Ku-Klux-Klan is still, if permitted, ready to dash out and do some light lynching. God, for millions of people, is still secure in his heaven, and My Fair Lady opened in London last night.

There was great persecution in many places, both by imprisoning, and by breaking up of meetings. At a meeting about seven miles from London, the rude people usually came out of several parishes round about, to abuse Friends, and often beat and bruised them exceedingly. One day they abused about eighty Friends that went to that meeting out of London, tearing their coats and cloaks from off their backs, and throwing them into ditches and ponds; and when they had besmeared them with dirt, they said they looked like witches.

Terrorists have hijacked our religion.

May we not return to those scoundrels of old, the illustrious founders of superstition and fanaticism, who first took the knife from the altar to make victims of those who refused to be their disciples?

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.....There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed.

A great number of poor Protestants, especially of women and children, they pricked and stabbed with their skeans, pitchforks and swords, and would slash, mangle and cut them in their heads, breasts, faces, arms and other parts of their bodies, but not kill them outright, but leave them wallowing in their blood to languish, starve and pine to death