Sam Harris Quotes

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.

I ask the fundamental question of rationality: Why do you believe what you believe? What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?

Not that believing such things has anything to do with whether they are true. You see that, don't you?

When did ignorance become a point of view?

The typical person has no trouble believing without knowing. What people need to realize is simply that you do not need to believe to know.

Believe in order to Understand and Understand in order to Believe

The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.

The origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion or doubt.

To believe and to understand are not diverse things, but the same things in different periods of growth.

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.

To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.

During the last century, and part of the one before, it was widely held that there was an unreconcilable conflict between knowledge and belief.

Why can you believe the lie, but not the truth?

I would recommend that skeptics devote even more effort than they do now to understanding the reasons why so many people want or need to believe.

If faith is what you have to go on, if faith is the link between your beliefs and the world at large, your beliefs are very likely to be wrong. Beliefs can be right or wrong. If you believe you can fly, that belief is only true if indeed you can fly. Somebody who thinks he can fly, and is wrong about it, will eventually discover there's a problem with his view of the world.

The interest I have to believe a thing is no proof that such a thing exists.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand.

To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

Doubt is not below knowledge, but above it.

As one may bring himself to believe almost anything he is inclined to believe, it makes all the difference whether we begin or end with the inquiry, 'What is truth?'

If you don't believe what other people believe, then they'll accuse you of being nihilistic.

As it is natural to believe many things without proof, so, despite all proof, is it natural to disbelieve others.

Once you reject evidence as a source of knowledge, you don't gotta believe nothin' you don't like.