Search quotes

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
9df0084	Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that are gods.	atheism cats dogs food god pets religion shelter water	Christopher Hitchens
8d61007	Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspec..	science	Christopher Hitchens
8c5a7ec	Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.	decency humanism religion	Christopher Hitchens
7824434	The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.	independent-thought opinions skepticism thinking	Christopher Hitchens
dbfb9f8	Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.	dislikes racism religion scepticism stupidity superstition	Christopher Hitchens
da39bee	What do you most value in your friends? Their continued existence.	friends friendship life proust-questionnaire rushdie	Christopher Hitchens
0ab6b31	About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough--and even miraculous enough if you insist--I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in..	atheism debate ethics existence existentialism faith god life materialism meaning-of-life morality naturalism religion respect secular-ethics self-respect supernaturalism	Christopher Hitchens
4b94df1	E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.	atheist evidence god noremorse science	Christopher Hitchens
fc91e3b	Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.	fundamentalism religion	Christopher Hitchens
2bd4107	I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.	arrogance atheism modesty religion solipsism	Christopher Hitchens
4e9db66	Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.	atheist god noremorse science	Christopher Hitchens
4895c55	The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.	atheist god noremorse	Christopher Hitchens
e32d551	Atheism by itself is, of course, not a moral position or a political one of any kind; it simply is the refusal to believe in a supernatural dimension. For you to say of Nazism that it was the implementation of the work of is a filthy slander, undeserving of you and an insult to this audience. 's thought was not taught in Germany; was so derided in Germany along with every other form of unbelief that all the great modern atheists, , ..	albert-einstein barbaric catholicism charles-darwin darwin darwinism einstein evolution fascism fascistic freud fuhrer germany hitler jewish mein-kampf nazi nazism pope science separation-of-church-and-state sigmund-freud superstitious united-states vatican	Christopher Hitchens
319bf96	What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.	skepticism	Christopher Hitchens
455ae83	To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?"		Christopher Hitchens
608cee6	To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that..	daughters death fatherhood fathers god mortality religion yeats	Christopher Hitchens
a119f28	Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.		Christopher Hitchens
480c79c	One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my c..		Christopher Hitchens
f51672f	Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, 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.	atheist existence humor invention inventions no-remorse problem voltaire	Christopher Hitchens
df14379	To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.	dogma doubt experience faith kool-aid religion scepticism	Christopher Hitchens
671f660	Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called , or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament--the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana--is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platoni..	ancient-greeks atheism boredom brotherhood cana christianity entheos food hellenism inspiration iran judaea marriage-at-cana miracles mullahs new-testament omar-khayyam oxford passover passover-seder plato reading religion symposia wine writing	Christopher Hitchens
472e27a	The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.		Christopher Hitchens
fa7f5b0	You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He has no friends.' This, I realized with a pang of pity that I can still remember, was only true as long as everybody agreed to it.	friends pity school schoolmates	Christopher Hitchens
87c29cd	The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.	ayaan-hirsi-ali azar-nafisi feminism heroes heroines iran iraq islam religion role-models taliban-treatment-of-women theocracy women women-and-religion women-in-afghanistan women-in-iran women-in-iraq women-in-islam women-s-rights-in-iran women-s-rights-movement-in-iran	Christopher Hitchens
c3a4bfb	I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, . No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships--gone. She went o..	anonymity born-again clean-slate extinction family genocide germans misery nabokov nazis rwanda rwandan-genocide short-stories signs-and-symbols survivors	Christopher Hitchens
01531b4	I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.	delusions fantasy illusions religion	Christopher Hitchens
591e303	Hitch: making rules about drinking can be the sign of an alcoholic,' as Martin Amis once teasingly said to me. (Adorno would have savored that, as well.) Of course, watching the clock for the start-time is probably a bad sign, but here are some simple pieces of advice for the young. Don't drink on an empty stomach: the main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food. Don't drink if you have the blues: it's a junk cure. Drink when y..	advice alcoholism alochol drinking drowning-one-s-sorrows drugs drunk-driving eating food hangovers martin-amis men responsibility rules scotch single-malt whiskey women	Christopher Hitchens
c87115b	Courage moral and physical: 'anima'--the ability to think like a woman. Also a sense of the absurd. Courage moral and physical: "anima"--the ability to visualize the mind and need of a man. Also a sense of the absurd."	courage empathy men sensitivity women	Christopher Hitchens
a13a626	I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim--so modestly and so humbly--to possess. It is time to withdraw our 'respect' from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.	atheism belief fantasy god humility inspirational modesty power religion respect arrogance	Christopher Hitchens
a2fdde1	Time spent arguing is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.	debate	Christopher Hitchens
d5af0d5	The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement."		Christopher Hitchens
29b4451	God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was quite the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization.	free-inquiry humanism science	Christopher Hitchens
6efa3a5	Actually--and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable--some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan--'a land without..	britain colonialism europe holy-land irony israel israeli-palestinian-conflict jews land palestine religion turkey zionism	Christopher Hitchens
409499b	My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilization, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either.		Christopher Hitchens
05e2e68	When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course..	beatification canonisation deacons devil devil-s-advocate fanatacism monsignors mother-teresa pope pope-john-paul-ii priests pro-bono religion sainthood satan testimony vatican	Christopher Hitchens
90f8cfc	Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock.	christianity	Christopher Hitchens
b323994	P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.	justification lies torture	Christopher Hitchens
a669134	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.	class irrationality nirvana reason society struggle utopia	Christopher Hitchens
7f4becc	Even if it were possible to cast my horoscope in this one life, and to make an accurate prediction about my future, it would not be possible to 'show' it to me because as soon as I saw it my future would change by definition. This is why Werner Heisenberg's adaptation of the Hays Office--the so-called principle of uncertainty whereby the act of measuring something has the effect of altering the measurement--is of such importance. In my case..	assistance bupropion depression future happiness hays-office horoscopes life measurement mentorship perception publicity reality self-delusion smoking soothsaying uncertainty-principle virtues werner-heisenberg writers	Christopher Hitchens
b7409f2	When the telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's , I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It 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..	bastille bullying censorship demagogy dictatorship enlightenment fascism fatwa first-amendment free-speech friendship george-hw-bush hate humor individualism intimidation iran irony khomeini literature love principles religion rushdie satanic-verses stupidity theocracy united-states united-states-constitution washington-post	Christopher Hitchens
433dc10	There can be no progress without head-on confrontation.	confrontation progress	Christopher Hitchens
1af5700	Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.	atheist god noremorse science	Christopher Hitchens
5714e5b	Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology.		Christopher Hitchens
0cc5062	Nothing optional -- from homosexuality to adultery -- is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishment) have a repressed desire to participate.		Christopher Hitchens

9df0084

Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that are gods.

atheism cats dogs food god pets religion shelter water

Christopher Hitchens

8d61007

Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspec..

science

Christopher Hitchens

8c5a7ec

Human decency is not derived from religion. It precedes it.

decency humanism religion

Christopher Hitchens

7824434

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.

independent-thought opinions skepticism thinking

Christopher Hitchens

dbfb9f8

Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.

dislikes racism religion scepticism stupidity superstition

Christopher Hitchens

da39bee

What do you most value in your friends? Their continued existence.

friends friendship life proust-questionnaire rushdie

Christopher Hitchens

0ab6b31

About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough--and even miraculous enough if you insist--I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in..

atheism debate ethics existence existentialism faith god life materialism meaning-of-life morality naturalism religion respect secular-ethics self-respect supernaturalism

Christopher Hitchens

4b94df1

E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.

atheist evidence god noremorse science

Christopher Hitchens

fc91e3b

Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.

fundamentalism religion

Christopher Hitchens

2bd4107

I suppose that one reason I have always detested religion is its sly tendency to insinuate the idea that the universe is designed with 'you' in mind or, even worse, that there is a divine plan into which one fits whether one knows it or not. This kind of modesty is too arrogant for me.

arrogance atheism modesty religion solipsism

Christopher Hitchens

4e9db66

Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely soley upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.

atheist god noremorse science

Christopher Hitchens

4895c55

The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.

atheist god noremorse

Christopher Hitchens

e32d551

Atheism by itself is, of course, not a moral position or a political one of any kind; it simply is the refusal to believe in a supernatural dimension. For you to say of Nazism that it was the implementation of the work of is a filthy slander, undeserving of you and an insult to this audience. 's thought was not taught in Germany; was so derided in Germany along with every other form of unbelief that all the great modern atheists, , ..

albert-einstein barbaric catholicism charles-darwin darwin darwinism einstein evolution fascism fascistic freud fuhrer germany hitler jewish mein-kampf nazi nazism pope science separation-of-church-and-state sigmund-freud superstitious united-states vatican

Christopher Hitchens

319bf96

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

skepticism

Christopher Hitchens

455ae83

To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: why not?"

Christopher Hitchens

608cee6

To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that..

daughters death fatherhood fathers god mortality religion yeats

Christopher Hitchens

a119f28

Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.

Christopher Hitchens

480c79c

One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my c..

Christopher Hitchens

f51672f

Thus, though I dislike to differ with such a great man, 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.

atheist existence humor invention inventions no-remorse problem voltaire

Christopher Hitchens

df14379

To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.

dogma doubt experience faith kool-aid religion scepticism

Christopher Hitchens

671f660

Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called , or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament--the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana--is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platoni..

ancient-greeks atheism boredom brotherhood cana christianity entheos food hellenism inspiration iran judaea marriage-at-cana miracles mullahs new-testament omar-khayyam oxford passover passover-seder plato reading religion symposia wine writing

Christopher Hitchens

472e27a

The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.

Christopher Hitchens

fa7f5b0

You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He has no friends.' This, I realized with a pang of pity that I can still remember, was only true as long as everybody agreed to it.

friends pity school schoolmates

Christopher Hitchens

87c29cd

The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.

ayaan-hirsi-ali azar-nafisi feminism heroes heroines iran iraq islam religion role-models taliban-treatment-of-women theocracy women women-and-religion women-in-afghanistan women-in-iran women-in-iraq women-in-islam women-s-rights-in-iran women-s-rights-movement-in-iran

Christopher Hitchens

c3a4bfb

I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, . No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships--gone. She went o..

anonymity born-again clean-slate extinction family genocide germans misery nabokov nazis rwanda rwandan-genocide short-stories signs-and-symbols survivors

Christopher Hitchens

01531b4

I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.

delusions fantasy illusions religion

Christopher Hitchens

591e303

Hitch: making rules about drinking can be the sign of an alcoholic,' as Martin Amis once teasingly said to me. (Adorno would have savored that, as well.) Of course, watching the clock for the start-time is probably a bad sign, but here are some simple pieces of advice for the young. Don't drink on an empty stomach: the main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food. Don't drink if you have the blues: it's a junk cure. Drink when y..

advice alcoholism alochol drinking drowning-one-s-sorrows drugs drunk-driving eating food hangovers martin-amis men responsibility rules scotch single-malt whiskey women

Christopher Hitchens

c87115b

Courage moral and physical: 'anima'--the ability to think like a woman. Also a sense of the absurd. Courage moral and physical: "anima"--the ability to visualize the mind and need of a man. Also a sense of the absurd."

courage empathy men sensitivity women

Christopher Hitchens

a13a626

I have met some highly intelligent believers, but history has no record to say that [s]he knew or understood the mind of god. Yet this is precisely the qualification which the godly must claim--so modestly and so humbly--to possess. It is time to withdraw our 'respect' from such fantastic claims, all of them aimed at the exertion of power over other humans in the real and material world.

atheism belief fantasy god humility inspirational modesty power religion respect arrogance

Christopher Hitchens

a2fdde1

Time spent arguing is, oddly enough, almost never wasted.

debate

Christopher Hitchens

d5af0d5

The noble title of "dissident" must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement."

Christopher Hitchens

29b4451

God did not create man in his own image. Evidently, it was quite the other way about, which is the painless explanation for the profusion of gods and religions, and the fratricide both between and among faiths, that we see all about us and that has so retarded the development of civilization.

free-inquiry humanism science

Christopher Hitchens

6efa3a5

Actually--and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable--some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan--'a land without..

britain colonialism europe holy-land irony israel israeli-palestinian-conflict jews land palestine religion turkey zionism

Christopher Hitchens

409499b

My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilization, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either.

Christopher Hitchens

05e2e68

When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course..

beatification canonisation deacons devil devil-s-advocate fanatacism monsignors mother-teresa pope pope-john-paul-ii priests pro-bono religion sainthood satan testimony vatican

Christopher Hitchens

90f8cfc

Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of 'the flock.

christianity

Christopher Hitchens

b323994

P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.

justification lies torture

Christopher Hitchens

a669134

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.

class irrationality nirvana reason society struggle utopia

Christopher Hitchens

7f4becc

Even if it were possible to cast my horoscope in this one life, and to make an accurate prediction about my future, it would not be possible to 'show' it to me because as soon as I saw it my future would change by definition. This is why Werner Heisenberg's adaptation of the Hays Office--the so-called principle of uncertainty whereby the act of measuring something has the effect of altering the measurement--is of such importance. In my case..

assistance bupropion depression future happiness hays-office horoscopes life measurement mentorship perception publicity reality self-delusion smoking soothsaying uncertainty-principle virtues werner-heisenberg writers

Christopher Hitchens

b7409f2

When the telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's , I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It 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..

bastille bullying censorship demagogy dictatorship enlightenment fascism fatwa first-amendment free-speech friendship george-hw-bush hate humor individualism intimidation iran irony khomeini literature love principles religion rushdie satanic-verses stupidity theocracy united-states united-states-constitution washington-post

Christopher Hitchens

433dc10

There can be no progress without head-on confrontation.

confrontation progress

Christopher Hitchens

1af5700

Why do humans exist? A major part of the answer: because Pikaia Gracilens survived the Burgess decimation.

atheist god noremorse science

Christopher Hitchens

5714e5b

Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology.

Christopher Hitchens

0cc5062

Nothing optional -- from homosexuality to adultery -- is ever made punishable unless those who do the prohibiting (and exact the fierce punishment) have a repressed desire to participate.

Christopher Hitchens