Sam Harris Quotes

What I want people to do is what's healthy for them.

After I was really unhappy and unhealthy, I think it dawned on me to stop doing the unhappy, unhealthy things.

Wellness is not a 'medical fix' but a way of living - a lifestyle sensitive and responsive to all the dimensions of body, mind, and spirit, an approach to life we each design to achieve our highest potential for well-being now and forever.

I have a morality. I don't know if it's the best morality. And I do like thinking. If people perceive that as a moral intellectualism, that's fine. That's up to them to decide.

Innocence is not virtue. Virtue demands the active employment of an ardent mind in the promotion of the general good. No man can be eminently virtuous who is not accustomed to an extensive range of reflection.

When you're being asked to think about the meaning of your intuitions before you act on them, maybe along the way you decide your intuitions are destructive or make no sense at all. And then you don't act on them.

Yoga has always been an integral part of my life style. The benefits I have reaped from a constant practice have been invaluable to me.

There's a difference in being opinionated and judgmental; I'm still trying to figure out what that fine line is - I think we are all.

Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.

If we did not bring to the examinations of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them.

I spend a good deal of time wondering how we will seem to the people who come after us. This is not an idle interest, but a deliberate attempt to strengthen the power of that "other eye," which we can use to judge ourselves.

Stop thinking, and end your problems. What difference between yes and no? What difference between success and failure? Must you value what others value, avoid what others avoid? How ridiculous!

I know when things are good or bad.

Health and well-being are the natural state of the body and mind.

To say a thing is natural is to condone it, never to praise it.

The difference between neurosis and wisdom is struggle.

I've been very careful about what I say yes to and what I say no to. And I think seriously always about... this may be a good idea right now or it may be a lot of money right now, but will it be good for me five years from now? Will it be fun? Will it make me hate myself? I think about all of those things.

Anything outside yourself, this you can see and apply your logic to it. But it's a human trait that when we encounter personal problems, these things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan. We tend to flounder around, blaming everything but the actual, deep-seated thing that's really chewing on us.

Question every thought that causes suffering and test it against your own sense of truth.

We often think more highly of ourselves than we ought to, and it's easy to judge others and be critical of their weaknesses and shortcomings. But this self-righteous attitude is a sin that we can be blinded to because we're so focused on what the other person did wrong. The reality is this attitude is worse than the wrong behavior we're judging.

Without proper self-evaluation, failure is inevitable.

You've got a degree in philosophy; so you think you're cleverer than me. But I'm not just some drama queen. Cause it's where you're at, not where you've been.

It is difficult for the isolated individual to work himself out of the immaturity which has become almost natural for him.

For me, there is only one means of ensuring that I do not lose respect for myself: constant criticism.

Whenever we discover a dislike in us, toward any one, we should ever be a little suspicious of ourselves.