Sam Harris Quotes

In all things there must be order, but it must of such a kind as is possible to observe...to see a man burnt for doing as he thought right, harms the people, for this is a matter of conscience.

No true believer could be intolerant or a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law carried the death penalty against atheists, I would begin by sending to the stake whoever denounced another.

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

Look not to the size of cathedrals or even to the words on the statute books for proof of the reality of religious freedom. Ask what is the fate of the Protestant in Spain, the Jew in Saudi Arabia, the Arab in Israel, the Catholic in Poland or the atheist in the United States?

No chapter in human history has been so largely written in terms of persecution and intolerance as the one dealing with religious freedom. From ancient times to the present day, the ingenuity of man has known no limits in its ability to forge weapons of oppression for use against … those who dare to express or practice unorthodox religious beliefs. And the Jehovah's Witnesses are living proof of the fact that, even in this nation, conceived as it was in the ideals of freedom, the right to practice religion in unconventional ways is still far from secure. Theirs is a militant and unpopular faith, pursued with a fanatical zeal. They have suffered brutal beatings; their property has been destroyed; they have been harassed at every turn by the resurrection and enforcement of little used ordinances and statutes.... To them, along with other present-day religious minorities, befalls the burden of testing our devotion to the ideals and constitutional guarantees of religious freedom. We should therefore hesitate before approving the application of a statute that might be used as another instrument of oppression. Religious freedom is too sacred a right to be restricted or prohibited in any degree without convincing proof that a legitimate interest of the state is in grave danger.

Islam never interfered with the dogmas of any faith. It never invented the rack or the stake for stifling difference of opinion, or strangling the human conscience or exterminating heresy.

The Middle East was not always convulsed by sectarian bloodletting. For a long time it was a place where minorities coexisted with the Muslim Faith, inhabiting this world far more peacefully than they do today.

I think most people have no idea about what religious freedom means.

You won't see Christians violently attacking people for criticising their religion like you do with Islam, things like the Charlie Hebdo attack.

Religious liberty in a nation is as real as the liberty of its least popular religious minority. Look not to the size of cathedrals or even to the words on the statute books for proof of the reality of religious freedom. Ask what is the fate of the Protestant in Spain, the Jew in Saudi Arabia, the Arab in Israel, the Catholic in Poland or the atheist in the United States.

Religious freedom is often referred to as America's first freedom. Our country was founded by religious exiles and built on the belief that God has given all people certain inalienable rights. Government's role in society is to protect these rights and ensure that we are safe from religious persecution and discrimination.

Bill Maher is right to condemn religious practices that violate fundamental human rights. Religious communities must do more to counter extremist interpretations of their faith. But failing to recognize that religion is embedded in culture — and making a blanket judgment about the world’s second largest religion — is simply bigotry.

The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale.

Is it not amazing that at a time when the rights of humanity are defined and understood with precision, in a country, above all others, fond of liberty-that in such an age and in such a country we find men professing a religion the most humane, mild, gentle and generous, adopting a principle as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible, and destructive to liberty?

What will the preachers say? .. to teach men not to persecute men: for, while a few sanctimonious humbugs are burning a few fanatics, the earth opens and swallows up all alike.

Muslims who convert to Christianity are not protected. That carries capital punishment. He would be given the opportunity to repent, and the Sharia court would need to determine if he was really a Muslim in the first place, did he know what he was doing, and once all of that has been determined, there is capital punishment for that in Islam.

While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious not to violate the conscience of others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to Him only in this case are they answerable.

Whether you're the wedding cake baker or the gay couple or the Baptist preacher, radical Islam would kill you all if they could.

I don't want people to chop off the citizens' or anybody's heads in the Middle East, OK? Because they're Christian or Muslim or anything else.

Look how in societies today where Islam is dominant and prominent, how any non-Islamic person, whether it's a Christian or an apostate or a woman or a critical journalist, how they are treated. This is in a very bad way, often with the death penalty or imprisonment or all those kind of terrible things.

Newspapers don't write enough about serious religious issues.

Terrorism constitutes a direct attack on the values the UN stands for: the rule of law; the protection of civilians; peaceful resolution of conflicts; and mutual respect between people of different faiths and cultures.

Does a person have a right to change his or her own religion? This is a fundamental human right, just like a right to freedom of speech.

Nowhere have the forces of intolerance been displayed less tolerantly than in the area of religious speech and practice.

... happily the Government of the United States... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.