Quotessence
Home / Books / The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Book by Sam Harris · 7 quotes · Reason, Religion, Religious

Filter quotes by topic

AllReasonReligionReligiousWorldHumansMenBeliefEvidenceFaithAtheistBelieveIgnoranceProblemAtheismMillionsEthicsFormHuman BeingsIdeasIfs

The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason Quotes

“The only thing that permits human beings to collaborate with one another in a truly open-ended way is their willingness to have their beliefs modified by new facts. Only openness to evidence and argument will secure a common world for us.”

WorldWayHumansFactsBeliefHuman BeingsCommonEvidenceArgumentSecureWillingnessOpennessPermit
Book:The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
Create image

“And while Protestant reformers broke with Rome on a variety of counts, their treatment of their fellow human beings was no less disgraceful. Public executions were more popular than ever: heretics were still reduced to ash, scholars were tortured and killed for impertinent displays of reason, and fornicators were murdered without a qualm.”

HumansStillsReasonReligionHuman BeingsFellowsVarietyBrokeTreatmentRomeDisplayScholarExecutionAshesProtestantsHereticReformersDisgracefulQualms
Book:The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
Create image

“How can we encourage other human beings to extend their moral sympathies beyond a narrow locus? How can we learn to become mere human beings, shorn of any more compelling national, ethnic, or religious identity? We can be reasonable. It is in the very nature of reason to fuse cognitive and moral horizons. Reason is nothing less than the guardian of love.”

LoveHumansReasonReligiousHuman BeingsMoralIdentityMereReasonableHorizonCompellingGuardianCognitiveFuseReligious Identity
Book:The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
Create image

“A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion, because spiritual experience, ethical behavior, and strong communities are essential for human happiness. And yet our religious traditions are intellectually defunct and politically ruinous. While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it.”

NeedsMindBelieveHumansHeartSpiritualStrongCommunityNaturalReligiousEssentialsBehaviorEvidenceTraditionHuman MindEthicalInsufficientPropensitySpiritual ExperienceHuman HappinessKernelReligious TraditionsEthical BehaviorStrong Community
Book:The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
Create image

“The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention—distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence—is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity—a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.”

MindHumansKindIdeasFormReligiousImpossibleProveGloryEvidenceClaimsSacredRationalConventionsDiscourseAppreciatedDistinguishedReligious FaithMisuseExtravaganceSingularityVanishingUncompromisingMonstrosityVanishing Point
Book:The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
Create image