Christopher Hitchens Quotes - Page 17

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• In the early days of the December that my father was to die, my younger brother brought me the news that I was a Jew. I was then a transplanted Englishman in America, married, with one son and, though unconsoled by any religion, a nonbelieving member of two Christian churches. On hearing the tidings, I was pleased to find that I was pleased.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Christian, Brother, Atheist

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.317, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• It must be obvious to anyone who can think at all that the charges against the Hussein regime are, as concerns arsenals of genocidal weaponry, true.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Thinking, Hussein, Regimes

  "Christopher Hitchens Quits Nation". www.scotsman.com. September 27, 2002.

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• Principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Principles, Way, Individual

  Christopher Hitchens (2008). “Why Orwell Matters”, p.83, Basic Books

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• Evelyn Waugh was in error when he said that in New York there was a neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistook for energy. There was, rather, a tensile excitement in the air which made one think - made me think for many years - that time spent asleep in New York was somehow time wasted. Whether this thought has lengthened or shortened my life I shall never know, but it has certainly colored it.

  Christopher Hitchens

  New York, Thinking, Air

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.195, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• It's amazing how relaxing it is not to claim you know more than you do. I'm surprised that those who claim to speak in the name of god don't take more advantage of this relief.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Names, Relief, Speak

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• I don't envy or much respect people who are completely politicised.

  Christopher Hitchens

  People, Envy, Respect People

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• The concept of loneliness and exile and self-sufficiency continually bucks me up.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Loneliness, Self, Bucks

  Christopher Hitchens (2009). “Letters to a Young Contrarian”, p.67, Basic Books

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• Millions of people die every day. Everyone's got to go sometime. I've came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Years, People, Alcohol

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• One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That's how the human species has done as well as it has.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Children, Knowing, Expectations

  "British writer Christopher Hitchens dies". "PM", www.abc.net.au. December 16, 2011.

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• All the time, I've felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn't.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Wagers, Life Is, Bohemian

  "Christopher Hitchens to Charlie Rose: I'd do it again" by Patrick Gavin, www.politico.com. August 16, 2010.

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• Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Witty, Fun, Tables

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.306, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Flaubert was right when he said that our use of language is like a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we need to move the very stars to pity.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Stars, Moving, Bangs

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.181, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Years, Chiefs, Consolation

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.35, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Disease, Decided

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.42, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Chomsky proceeds on the almost unthinkably subversive assumption that the United States should be judged by the same standards that it preaches (often at gunpoint) to other nations he is nearly the only person now writing who assumes a single standard of international morality not for rhetorical effect, but as a matter of habitual, practically instinctual conviction.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Writing, United States, Matter

  Christopher Hitchens (1994). “For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports”, p.220, Verso

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• The pornography of tough-mindedness, covert action, and preparedness for "peace through strength" has had a predictably hypnotic effect on the legislative branch, turning it from legal watchdog to lapdog.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Branches, Action, Tough

  Christopher Hitchens (2014). “For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports”, p.46, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• The United States has an isolationist and insular culture, combined with a global and interventionist posture. This highly dangerous and febrile mixture, which greatly facilitates the task of the fear-mongers and chauvinists, needs a very exact and nuanced diagnosis. I don't think that analogies from the totalitarian model, however suggestive, are sufficient.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Thinking, United States, Tasks

  Christopher Hitchens (1994). “For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports”, p.219, Verso

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• If people I've never met or don't know say that what I've written or done or said means anything to them, then I'm happy to take it at face value, for once. It cheers me up.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Cheer, Mean, People

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• There are things about quitting the smoking habit for which nobody prepares you. Did I have any idea that I would indulge in long, drooling-nay, dribbling-lascivious dreams in which I was still wreathed in fragrant blue fumes? I would wake with the complete and guilty conviction that I had sinned in word and deed while I was asleep.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Dream, Blue, Ideas

  Christopher Hitchens (2015). “And Yet...: Essays”, p.184, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• North Korea is a necrocracy, or a mauselocracy or a thanatocracy in which the one [Kim Il-sung] is diffused into being with the other [Kim Jong Il], and where both of them are said to have had miraculous births attended by miraculous phenomena such as, for example, birds singing in Korean, when they were born.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Korea, Bird, Singing

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• The Iranian people were converted to Islam not very much longer after the conquest of the Arab world by Islam, but they refused to adopt the Arabic language, and it's a great point of pride to them that Persian culture and the Persian language and Persian literature survived the conversion to Islam. And the conversion to Islam also was for most of them not the Sunni majority form, but the Shia one. So there's a great discrepancy between Iranian society and many other of what we think of as Arab Muslim States and systems.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Pride, Thinking, Discrepancies Between

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• Everyone in Iran is perceived to be a child with a paternal authority vested in the Guardian Council and the Sufi elders. They're supposed to be grateful. They can never for a moment not be afforded this wonderful protection. The father who will never go away. The father who will never quit caring for them.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Children, Father, Grateful

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• The creation story is ridiculous garbage. And has given us a completely false picture of our origin as a species and the origins of the cosmos. If you want a good mythical story it would be the life of Socrates.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Garbage, Would Be, Cosmos

  Source: www.wanliss.com

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• I could be spending time looking through a telescope or into a microscope and finding out the most extraordinary, wonderful things, but people say faith can move mountains. Faith in what, by the way? You haven't said.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Moving, People, Mountain

  Source: www.wanliss.com

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• I think the cultural task is to separate our impulses and needs and desires from the supernatural and, above all, from the superstitious.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Thinking, Desire, Tasks

  Source: www.wanliss.com

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