Early Life and Education
Harris grew up in a secular home in Los Angeles, with a Jewish mother and Quaker father who rarely discussed religion, although it was always a subject which had interested him. Harris has at times been reluctant to discuss personal details such as where he lives, where he grew up, or what his parents do professionally, citing security concerns. In 1986, as a young student at Stanford University, Harris experimented with the drug ecstasy, and has spoken about the powerful insights he felt psychologically. Harris was a devout student of martial arts in his teens and early twenties, and he taught classes in college. After a hiatus of more than twenty years, he began practicing two martial arts with Rory Miller and other self-defense experts.
Harris found himself interested in spiritual and philosophical questions when he was at Stanford University and the notion that he might be able to achieve spiritual insights without the help of drugs. After leaving Stanford in the course of his sophomore year as an English major, he traveled to Asia, where he studied meditation with Hindu and Buddhist teachers, including Dilgo Khyentse. Eleven years later, in 1997, he returned to Stanford University, going on to complete a BA degree in philosophy in 2000. Harris began writing his first book, The End of Faith, immediately after the September 11 attacks.
In 2009, Harris earned a PhD degree in cognitive neuroscience at University of California, Los Angeles, using functional magnetic resonance imaging to conduct research into the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty.
Harris married his wife Annaka Harris in 2004, and they have a daughter. Annaka is Co-Founder of Project Reason and an editor of nonfiction and scientific books.
Read more about this topic: Sam Harris (author)
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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“It is no small mischief to a boy, that many of the best years of his life should be devoted to the learning of what can never be of any real use to any human being. His mind is necessarily rendered frivolous and superficial by the long habit of attaching importance to words instead of things; to sound instead of sense.”
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“In the years of the Roman Republic, before the Christian era, Roman education was meant to produce those character traits that would make the ideal family man. Children were taught primarily to be good to their families. To revere gods, one’s parents, and the laws of the state were the primary lessons for Roman boys. Cicero described the goal of their child rearing as “self- control, combined with dutiful affection to parents, and kindliness to kindred.””
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