To the eyes of an enlightened person, all people are equal. Every person's blood is red. Every person's tears are salty.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about.

Sam Harris

Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious.

Sam Harris

The lies of the powerful lead us to distrust governments and corporations. The lies of the weak make us callous toward the suffering of others.

Sam Harris

Every lie is an assault on the autonomy of those we lie to.

Sam Harris

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