Sam Harris Quotes

If you didn't have any conscious beings in the world, there really wouldn't be morality but with consciousness that you have it.

I try not to do anything that's immoral.

Right and wrong are not simply matters of evolutionary impacts and what is natural.

Without ethics, man has no future. This is to say, mankind without them cannot be itself. Ethics determine choices and actions and suggest difficult priorities.

I think that unless you can take judgments of right and wrong like an automaton, you must have emotions because that is our only way of moral guidance.

The novel is a penetrating study of morals and ethics.

Now here is a departure from the first principle of true ethics. Here we find ideas of moral wrong and moral right associated with something else than beneficial action. The consequent is, we lose sight of the real basis of morals, and substitute a false one.

The fundamental basis of ethics must be chosen in some non-scientific way.

No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine.

The foundations of morality are like all other foundations: If you dig too much about them, the superstructure will come tumbling down.

What we call “morals” is simply blind obedience to words of command.

Morality is a social necessity

If you say morality is just what you like, you lose the metaphysical level of what in the history of philosophy is called 'categorical imperative.'

Our moral philosophy determines our values - what we care about and what we don't care about - and our values determine our decisions, actions, and beliefs. Therefore, moral philosophy applies to everything in our lives.

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.

Children often have a much stronger concept of morality than adults.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that morality is not just a matter of opinion.

At the end of the day, if there are truly ethical considerations, those have to override scientific considerations.

Modern morality is all about perception.

If your morals make you dreary, depend on it, they are wrong.

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.

What a man calls his 'conscience' is merely the mental action that follows a sentimental reaction after too much wine or love.