Sam Harris Quotes

In the early '90s, I was disillusioned after the blasts and riots in Mumbai. I was in college and started thinking that religion was the root cause of all these evils. While my father told me not to blame religion because of a few bad people, I wasn't convinced. The faith was restored after I started writing my first book.

I don't think there's any religion we can consider an enemy. There is no religion that calls for killing and hating and fighting. Muslims can be as peaceful [as we are], and even today I'm not sure all of them are necessarily very extreme or very violent. It has nothing to do with religion; it has to do with the ones who use the name of religion for their own ambitions. I don't know any lord in heaven who declared that the best solution is to kill everybody who is against me.

I know of no wars started by anyone to impose lack of religion on someone else. We have lethal Sunni v Shia, Catholic against Protestant, but no agnostic suicide bombers attack crowded atheist pubs.

Violence and religion have often gone together, but it's not a perfect correlation, and it doesn't have to be a permanent connection, because religions themselves change.

We are, of course, now against any other group burning Qurans. We would right now ask no one to burn Qurans. We are absolutely strong on that. It is not the time to do it.

How do we stop ourselves from blowing each other up because we think that God wants us to blow each other up.

Islam is not the enemy, religious extremism is.

They do not want people committing violence, either in their community or in the name of their faith, and so some of our most productive relationships are with people who see things and tell us things who happen to be Muslim.

In a world wounded by conflicts, where violence is justified in God's name, it's important to repeat that religion can never become a vehicle of hatred, it can never be used in God's name to justify violence.

In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance and even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant.

No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

The starting point is the recognition that throughout history, religion has been a cause of bloodshed, and it remains so today. Because religion has contributed to the world's problems, it must develop specific and practical ways to help solve those problems.

I have to say that it's a weird feeling to have to respond to a Christian leader of an anti-Muslims organisation - it would be like having to respond to a Muslim leader of an anti-Jewish organisation about Judaism so the whole thing is kind of weird. Let me just say it's kind of convenient to simply pick and choose whatever violent bits and pieces one finds in the Koran and ignore the equally important versus that talk about compassion and peace.

For the sake of peace, religious beliefs must never be allowed to be abused in the cause of violence and war.

Being a longstanding partner of the Arab world, we in India are also deeply concerned with the rise of fanaticism, extremism, and terrorism in parts of the region.

I tell them I have worked 40 years to make the W.S. platform broad enough for Atheists and Agnostics to stand upon, and now if need be I will fight the next 40 to keep it Catholic enough to permit the straightest Orthodox religionist to speak or pray and count her beads upon. (on women's suffrage)

Scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself.

If you're following the news, you know that the major religions differ in their interpretation of the holy books. For example, one way to interpret God's will is that you should love your neighbor. An alternate reading of the holy books might lead you to rig a donkey cart with small mortar rockets and aim it at a hotel full of infidels. In summary, po-tay-to, poh-tah-to. Religions are very flexible.

Until there is peace between religions, there can be no peace in the world.

And on Thursday, President Obama seized the opportunity of the National Prayer Breakfast to forthrightly criticize the 'terrible deeds' . . . committed 'in the name of Christ.'.

As long as there are those who are willing to shed blood and take innocent life in the name of religion, the name of God, the world will never know a true and lasting peace.

Our greatest ally in the Pakistan region of turmoil is the moderate Muslim majority, who we must reach out to and embrace if we ever are to have peace for our children.

I’m an atheist. The good news about atheists is that we have no mandate to convert anyone. So you’ll never find me on your doorstep on a Saturday morning with a big smile saying ‘Just stopped by to tell you there is no word. I brought along this little blank book I was hoping you could take a look at.’

Many argue that Christianity is "different" from other religions - that it is primarily about love of one's fellow man. The Crusades, The Inquisition, Calvin's Geneva all prove that this is not the case. These events were pre-eminently about obedience to authority.