Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act.
Sam Harris
Unless someone is suicidal or otherwise on the brink, deciding how much he should know about himself seems the quintessence of arrogance.
Sam Harris
When we presume to lie for the benefit of others, we have decided that we are the best judges of how much they should understand about their own lives.
Sam Harris
Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: 'Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature'.
Sam Harris
If you think that Christianity is the most direct and undefiled expression of love and compassion the world has ever seen, you do not know much about the world's other religions.
Sam Harris
A mind that is tied wants to run in ten directions. When let loose, it realises it has nowhere to go.
Traleg Kyabgon
Engagement with politics is like sports fandom in another way: people seek and consume news to enhance the fan experience, not to make their opinions more accurate.
Steven Pinker
It is the very nature of argument to stake a claim to being right.
Steven Pinker
If you take the opportunity to rest awhile along the journey, eventually you'll realize the place you want to reach is the place you already are.
Mingyur Rinpoche
The key — the how of Buddhist practice — lies in learning to simply rest in a bare awareness of thoughts, feelings and perceptions as they occur.
Mingyur Rinpoche
What we think of as our identity - "my mind," "my body", "my self" - is actually an illusion generated by the unceasing flow of thoughts, emotions, sensation and perceptions.
Mingyur Rinpoche
One of the earliest lessons I was taught by my father was that Buddhists don't see the mind as a discrete entity, but rather as a perpetually unfolding experience.
Mingyur Rinpoche
Gradually I began to recognize how feeble and transitory the thoughts and emotions that had troubled me for years actually were, and how fixating on small problems had turned them into big ones.
Mingyur Rinpoche
The unshakable basis of serenity, confidence and happiness was closer to me than my own eyes.
Mingyur Rinpoche
Buddhism is not so much concerned with getting well as with recognizing that you are, right here, right now, as whole, as good, as essentially well as you could ever hope to be.
Mingyur Rinpoche
In many surveys it turns out that every student, questioned privately, thinks that binge drinking is a terrible idea, but each is convinced that his peers think it's cool.
Steven Pinker
Humans can thrive on a modern vegetarian diet and animals' interests in a life free of pain and premature death surely outweigh the marginal increase in pleasure we get from eating their flesh.
Steven Pinker
Pain and humiliation distract children from pondering what they did wrong.
Steven Pinker
In 1987 only half of Americans thought it was always wrong for a man to strike his wife with a belt or stick.
Steven Pinker
The evolutionary biologist J.B.S. Haldane, when asked whether he would lay down his life for his brother, replied, 'No, but for two brothers or eight cousins.'
Steven Pinker