The wealthiest Americans often live as though they and their children had nothing to gain from investments in education, infrastructure, clean-energy, and scientific research.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the disconnect between the wealthy and the societal investments that benefit all.
Sam Harris's quote emphasizes that many affluent Americans behave as if they are indifferent to critical societal investments such as education, infrastructure, clean energy, and scientific research. It suggests that there is a lack of awareness or a disregard for the collective benefits these investments can provide, not only for society but also for themselves and their future generations. This sentiment reflects a broader critique of the privilege that comes with wealth and its potential to create separations within society.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the responsibilities of the wealthy in investing in community resources.
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.
What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.
The core of science is not a mathematical modeling--it is intellectual honesty. It is a willingness to have our certainties about the world constrained by good evidence and good argument.
It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.
It is taboo in our society to criticize a persons religious faith... these taboos are offensive, deeply unreasonable, but worse than that, they are getting people killed. This is really my concern. My concern is that our religions, the diversity of our religious doctrines, is going to get us killed. I'm worried that our religious discourse- our religious beliefs are ultimately incompatible with civilization.
It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.
And when I read, and really I do not read so much, only a few authors, - a few men that I discovered by accident - I do this because they look at things in a broader, milder and more affectionate way than I do, and because they know life better, so that I can learn from them.
And what is a man without energy? Nothing - nothing at all.
A wise man told me don't argue with fools. Cause people from a distance can't tell who is who.
I confess I have yet to learn that a lesson of the purest good may not be drawn from the vilest evil.
We, of our time, have played our part in the perseverance, and we have pledged ourselves to the dead generations who have preserved intact for us this glorious heritage, that we, too, will strive to be faithful to the end, and pass on this tradition unblemished.
The shadow is the greatest teacher for how to come to the light.
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