Harris: "The science of morality is about maximizing psychological and social health. It's really no more inflammatory than that."

Harris: "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."

Harris: "Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma."

Harris: "Human well-being is not a random phenomenon. It depends on many factors - ranging from genetics and neurobiology to sociology and economics. But, clearly, there are scientific truths to be known about how we can flourish in this world. Wherever we can have an impact on the well-being of others, questions of morality apply."

Harris: "As an atheist, I am angry that we live in a society in which the plain truth cannot be spoken without offending 90% of the population."

Harris: "My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on their own. That's not to say that all religious people are lunatics or idiots. It's anything but that."

Harris: "Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to knowledge about ourselves and the world."

Harris: "Everything we do is for the purpose of altering consciousness. We form friendships so that we can feel certain emotions, like love, and avoid others, like loneliness. We eat specific foods to enjoy their fleeting presence on our tongues. We read for the pleasure of thinking another person's thoughts."

Harris: "The problem is that religion tends to give people bad reasons to be good."

Harris: "Human experience depends on everything that can influence states of the human brain, ranging from changes in our genome to changes in the global economy."

Harris: "It's simply untrue that religion provides the only framework for a universal morality."

Harris: "Religious ideas about good and evil tend to focus on how to achieve well-being in the next life, and this makes them terrible guides to securing it in this one. Of course, there are a few gems to be found in every religious tradition, but insofar as these precepts are wise and useful they are not, in principle, religious."

Harris: "Strange bonds of trust and self-deception tend to grow between journalists and their subjects."