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3f4b618
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Only servility requires the realm of illusion.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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e769d39
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It is sometimes argued that disbelief in a fearful and tempting heavenly despotism makes life into something arid and tedious and cynical: a mere existence without any consolation or any awareness of the numinous or the transcendent. What nonsense this is. In the first place, it commits an obvious error. It seems to say that we ought not to believe that we are an evolved animal species with faulty components and a short lifespan for ourselv..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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36b4bb4
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I have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of professing the Christian religion, namely, love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readiest criterion of their faith.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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072d4f4
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It is indeed strange, given the heavy emphasis placed by chroniclers on Churchill's sheer magnitude of personality, that the ingredient of pure ambition should be so much ignored or even disallowed.
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personality
biography
larger-than-life
winston-churchill
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Christopher Hitchens |
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a0fc3a9
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The maxim, by which we commonly conduct ourselves in our reasonings, is, that the objects, of which we have no experience, resemble those, of which we have; that what we have found to be most usual is always most probable; and that where there is an opposition of arguments, we ought to give the preference to such as are founded on the greatest number of past observations. But though, in proceeding by this rule, we readily reject any fact wh..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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8251d7c
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A consciousness of rectitude can be a terrible thing, and in those days I didn't just think that I was right: I thought that "we" (our group of International Socialists in particular) were being damn well proved right. If you have never yourself had the experience of feeling that you are yoked to the great steam engine of history, then allow me to inform you that the conviction is a very intoxicating one."
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Christopher Hitchens |
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1f7d13e
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Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity. The human mind is readily swayed this way or that in..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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c768a18
|
The greatest, equally with the smallest motions of the Universe, are subjected to the rigid necessity of inevitable laws. These laws are the unknown causes of the known effects perceivable in the Universe. Their effects are the boundaries of our knowledge, their names the expressions of our ignorance. To suppose some existence beyond, or above them, is to invent a second and superfluous hypothesis to account for what has already been accoun..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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1d6f3cc
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I have tried to write about politics in an allusive manner that draws upon other interests and to approach literature and criticism without ignoring the political dimension. Even if I have failed in this synthesis, I have found the attempt worth making.
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literature
politics
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Christopher Hitchens |
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b6f4a85
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If we permit our imagination to traverse the obscure regions of possibility, we may doubtless imagine, according to the complexion of our minds, that disorder may have a relative tendency to unmingled good, or order be relatively replete with exquisite and subtile evil. To neither of these conclusions, which are equally presumptuous and unfounded, will it become the philosopher to assent. Order and disorder are expressions denoting our perc..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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a760994
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Let's just go in and enjoy ourselves,' Yvonne had said after a long moment when the Hitchens family had silently reviewed the menu--actually of the prices not the courses--outside a restaurant on our first and only visit to Paris. I knew at once that the odds against enjoyment had shortened (or is it lengthened? I never remember).
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family
odds
menus
price
restaurants
paris
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Christopher Hitchens |
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ddc6b22
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How much vanity must be concealed-not too effectively at that- in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?
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Christopher Hitchens |
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1d9eb3f
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You allege some considerations in favor of a Deity from the universality of a belief in his existence. The superstitions of the savage, and the religion of civilized Europe appear to you to conspire to prove a first cause. I maintain that it is from the evidence of revelation alone that this belief derives the slightest countenance. That credulity should be gross in proportion to the ignorance of the mind that it enslaves, is in strict cons..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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df8438c
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It is among men of genius and science that Atheism alone is found, but among these alone is cherished an hostility to those errors, with which the illiterate and vulgar are infected. How small is the proportion of whose who really believe in God, to the thousands who are prevented by their occupations from ever bestowing a serious thought upon the subject, and the millions who worship butterflies, bones, feathers, monkeys, calabashes and se..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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f4091cf
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Like the quality of mercy, the prompting of compassion is not finite, and can be self-replenishing.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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bf60425
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Rights have to be asserted. Animals cannot make such assertions. We have to make representations to ourselves on their behalf.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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0db8f45
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Jesus, it is true, shows no personal interest in gain, but he does speak of treasure in heaven and even of "mansions" as an inducement to follow him. Is it not further true that all religions down the ages have shown a keen interest in the amassment of material goods in the real world?"
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Christopher Hitchens |
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81503f1
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The enduring rapture with magic and fable has always struck me as latently childish and somehow sexless (and thus also related to childlessness).
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sex
literature
magic
childlessness
fable
fantasy-literature
sexuality
literary-criticism
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Christopher Hitchens |
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485899f
|
North Korea is a famine state. In the fields, you can see people picking up loose grains of rice and kernels of corn, gleaning every scrap. They look pinched and exhausted. In the few, dingy restaurants in the city, and even in the few modern hotels, you can read the through the soup, or the tea, or the coffee. Morsels of inexplicable fat or gristle are served as 'duck.' One evening I gave in and tried a bowl of dog stew, which at least t..
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dogs
dog-meat
famine
hotels
korean-cuisine
north-korean-famine
pyongyang
the-pyongyang-times
starvation
north-korea
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Christopher Hitchens |
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aea7490
|
Por mais impiedoso e arrogante que o poder possa parecer, seus detentores sao meros mamiferos que evacuam e anseiam e que sofrem de insonia e inseguranca. Esses mamiferos sao tambem necessariamente vaidosos ao extremo e muitas vezes desejam ser amados tanto quanto desejam ser temidos.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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0ae1d30
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Thus it is brought prominently before us, that superstition's chief victims are those persons who greedily covet temporal advantages; they it is, who (especially when they are in danger, and cannot help themselves) are wont with prayers and womanish tears to implore help from God: upbraiding Reason as blind, because she cannot show a sure path to the shadows they pursue, and rejecting human wisdom as vain; but believing the phantoms of imag..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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1602462
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only while under the dominion of fear do men fall a prey to superstition; that all the portents ever invested with the reverence of misguided religion are mere phantoms of dejected and fearful minds; and lastly, that prophets have most power among the people, and are most formidable to rulers, precisely at those times when the state is in most peril. I think this is sufficiently plain to all, and will therefore say no more on the subject.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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6f63eee
|
The duties, which a man performs as a friend or parent, do not seem merely owing to his benefactor or children; nor can he be wanting to these duties, without breaking through all the ties of nature and morality. A strong inclination may prompt him to the performance: A sentiment of order and moral obligation joins its force to these natural ties: And the whole man, if truly virtuous, is drawn to his duty, without any effort or endeavour. E..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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398ae15
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Although war can bring with it great enthusiasm and solidarity, it also brings the reaction to these things.
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war
reactionary-politics
solidarity
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Christopher Hitchens |
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9a277a5
|
The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural events, which, in all ages, have either been detected by contrary evidence, or which detect themselves by their absurdity, prove sufficiently the strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and the marvellous, and ought reasonably to beget a suspicion against all relations of this kind. This is our natural way of thinking, even with regard to the most common and m..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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8b9dd22
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because their lack of conscience prevents them from blushing--
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Christopher Hitchens |
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6037b67
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Wars, wars, wars': reading up on the region I came across one moment when quintessential Englishness had in fact intersected with this darkling plain. In 1906 Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for British colonies, had been honored by an invitation from Kaiser Wilhelm II to attend the annual maneuvers of the Imperial German Army, held at Breslau. The Kaiser was 'resplendent in the uniform of the White Silesian Cuirassiers' an..
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war
poetry
british-overseas-territories
cars
cavalry
churchill
englishness
german-army
german-empire
infantry
kaiser
kaiser-wilhelm-ii
silesia
sylvia-plath
upper-silesia
wrocław
british-empire
germany
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Christopher Hitchens |
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2ddb3c8
|
The hours I spent in this anachronistic, bibliophile, Anglophile retreat were in surreal contrast to the shrieking horror show that was being enacted in the rest of the city. I never felt this more acutely than when, having maneuvered the old boy down the spiral staircase for a rare out-of-doors lunch the next day--terrified of letting him slip and tumble--I got him back upstairs again. He invited me back for even more readings the followin..
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poetry
jorge-luis-borges
pinochet
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Christopher Hitchens |
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bc6f153
|
It was at a conference in Cyprus in 1976, where the theme was the rights of small nations, that I first met Edward Said. It was impossible not to be captivated by him: of his many immediately seductive qualities I will start by mentioning a very important one. When he laughed, it was as if he was surrendering unconditionally to some guilty pleasure. At first the very picture of professorial rectitude, with faultless tweeds, cravats, and oth..
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laughter
cyprus
edward-said
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Christopher Hitchens |
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b039dcf
|
These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country, but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly - 'Tis dearness only that gives..
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Christopher Hitchens |
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fcbfa76
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Death has this much to be said for it: You don't have to get out of bed for it. Wherever you happen to be They bring it to you -- free.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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3ee0508
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In this way he will draw men to him by the strong cords of their passions, made reason-proof by being baptized with the name of piety.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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37aa326
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Si me convierto sera porque es preferible que muera un creyente a que lo haga un ateo.
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death-and-dying
religion
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Christopher Hitchens |
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8b53c4c
|
To all of us the thought of heaven is dear-- Why not be sure of it and make it here? No doubt there is a heaven yonder too, But 'tis so far away--and you are near. Men talk of heaven,--there is no heaven but here; Men talk of hell,--there is no hell but here; Men of hereafters talk, and future lives,-- O love, there is no other life--but here.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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82d3f80
|
He was also dying, though we didn't know it yet.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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d3240bd
|
In
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george-orwell
spain
spanish-civil-war
stalinism
soviet-union
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Christopher Hitchens |
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cc3b529
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Though I am sometimes reluctant to admit it, there really
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christianity
religion
king-james-bible
literary
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Christopher Hitchens |
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547926d
|
Almost all religions from Buddhism to Islam feature either a humble prophet or a prince who comes to identify with the poor, but what is this if not populism? It is hardly a surprise if religions choose to address themselves first to the majority who are poor and bewildered and uneducated.
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humble
islam
populism
prince
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Christopher Hitchens |
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e11c911
|
Civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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1b50064
|
This need to know things at the level of basic experience, and the reluctance to be fobbed off by the official story or the popular rumor, was a part of the "infinite capacity for taking pains" that Thomas Carlyle once described as the constituent of genius."
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Christopher Hitchens |
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f8b8483
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I shall simply say that those who offer false consolation are false friends.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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311cc60
|
The road to Damascus was not and is not a one-way street.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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fe64971
|
George Orwell once observed that if Napoleon Bonaparte had been cut down by a musket ball as he entered Moscow, he would have been remembered as the greatest general since Alexander.
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Christopher Hitchens |
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01b4525
|
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. There
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Christopher Hitchens |