Christopher Hitchens Quotes - Page 7

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• It [defending Salmon Rushdie] was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Bullying, Hate, Expression

  "Rushdie and After" by David Remnick, www.newyorker.com. September 16, 2012.

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• Many writers, especially male ones, have told us that it is the decease of the father which opens the prospect of one's own end, and affords an unobstructed view of the undug but awaiting grave that says 'you're next.' Unfilial as this may seem, that was not at all so in my own case. It was only when I watched Alexander [my own son] being born that I knew at once that my own funeral director had very suddenly, but quite unmistakably, stepped onto the stage. I was surprised by how calmly I took this, but also by how reluctant I was to mention it to my male contemporaries.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Father, Son, Views

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• "Objective" means that, in a confrontation with the evidence, you would be willing to change your own mind.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Pain, Mean, Mind

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• The offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet; that I haven’t understood enough; that I can’t know enough; that I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Giving, Risk, Want

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• Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have an agonising and horrible eternal life of torture, I say, 'Well, good on you. See you there.'

  Christopher Hitchens

  People, Praying, Torture

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• The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Struggle, Sleep, Anxiety

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays”, p.65, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Philosophy, School, May

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• Religion is not just incongruent with morality, but in essential ways incompatible with it.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Essentials, Way, Morality

  "Moore’s Law" by Christopher Hitchens, www.slate.com. August 27, 2003.

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• It's a big mistake to think that your own cause, or your own country, or your own side has God in its corner. For one thing, it commits the sin of pride.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Country, Mistake, Pride

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• There can be no progress without head-on confrontation.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Progress, Argument, Confrontation

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays”, p.151, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, Voltaire was simply ludicrous when he said that if god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him. The human invention of god is the problem to begin with.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Men, Atheism

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.96, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• The discovery there is no god is a great relief, because if there were, it would be like living in a celestial North Korea if there was one. You would never be able to escape.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Discovery, Korea, Religion

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• This huge and terrible industry [the slave trade] was blessed by all churches and for a long time aroused absolutely no religious protest. . . . In the eighteenth century, a few dissenting Mennonites and Quakers in America began to call for abolition, as did some freethinkers like Thomas Paine.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religious, Blessed, America

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.171, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• To reflect upon the event horizon is a great deal more awe-inspiring than a burning bush or a wooden statue that weeps or pees or bleeds.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religion, Events, Horizon

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• A wide and vague impression exists that so-called Eastern religion is more contemplative, innocuous, and humane than the proselytizing monotheisms of the West. Don't believe a word of this: try asking the children of Indochina who were dumped by their parents for inherited deformities that were attributed to sins in a previous 'life.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Children, Believe

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• Do I fear death? No, I am not afraid of being dead because there's nothing to be afraid of, I won't know it. I fear dying, of dying I feel a sense of waste about it and I fear a sordid death, where I am incapacitated or imbecilic at the end which isn't something to be afraid of, it's something to be terrified of.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Fear, Dying, Waste

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• There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Stupid, People, Lazy

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• What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Class, Way, Claims

  Christopher Hitchens (2008). “Thomas Paine's Rights of Man”, p.11, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Indeed, it's futile to try and use Holy Scripture to support any political position. I deeply distrust anyone who does. Just look at what an Islamic Republic is like.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Islamic, Support

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• Plainly, this unwillingness to give ground even on unimportant disagreements is the symptom of some deepseated insecurity, as was my one-time fondness for making teasing remarks (which I amended when I read Anthony Powell's matter-of-fact observation that teasing is an unfailing sign of misery within) and as is my very pronounced impatience. The struggle, therefore, is to try and cultivate the virtuous side of these shortcomings: to be a genial host while only slightly whiffled, for example, or to be witty at the expense of one's own weaknesses instead of those of other people.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Witty, Struggle, People

  Christopher Hitchens (2010). “Hitch 22: A Memoir”, p.302, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• So there's nothing more vulgar than the sound of someone saying, God Bless America, someone who doesn't really believe it, but he thinks it will make him look good to other people. I think it's the most nauseating spectacle.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Believe, Thinking, America

  Source: www.npr.org

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• To remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off

  Christopher Hitchens

  Break Off, Remember, Sin

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.34, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• If I was told to sacrifice something to prove my devotion to God, if I was told to do what all monotheists are told to do and admire the man who said 'Yes I'll gut my kid to show my love of God.'

  Christopher Hitchens

  Kids, Sacrifice, Men

  "Thank you, Mr. Hitchens" by Raheem Kassam, www.thecommentator.com. December 16, 2011.

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• No, nothing is sacred. And even if there were to be something called sacred, we mere primates wouldn't be able to decide which book or which idol or which city was the truly holy one. Thus, the only thing that should be upheld at all costs and without qualification is the right of free expression, because if that goes, then so do all other claims of right as well.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Book, Expression, Idols

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• The god of Moses would call for other tribes, including his favorite one, to suffer massacre and plague and even extirpation, but when the grave closed over his victims he was essentially finished with them unless he remembered to curse their succeeding progeny. Not until the advent of the Prince of Peace do we hear of the ghastly idea of further punishing and torturing the dead.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Ideas, Suffering, Prince Of Peace

  Christopher Hitchens (2007). “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”, p.140, Hachette UK

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