Search quotes

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
6a75b18	The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on--only henceforth in my absence. (It's the second of those thoughts: the edition of the newspaper that will come out on the day after I have gone, that is the more distressing.) Much more horr..	heaven death life obituary meaning-of-life eternal-life atheism despair hell	Christopher Hitchens
14f7114	And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely 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.	faith reason religion science scepticism belief principles	Christopher Hitchens
a041cd9	Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expect..	myth responsibility morality reason fear love truth atheist-argument christianity-is-immoral christopher-hitchens compulsory divine-dictatorship eternal-punishment great-atheist-argument hitchens hitchslap homo-sapiens immoral-christianity love-your-neighbor supreme-being dawkins indifference human-sacrifice eternal-father totalitarianism debate dictatorship richard-dawkins wishful-thinking belief evidence ethics atheism health intellect atheist redemption crime guilt	Christopher Hitchens
40e3598	A rule of thumb with humor; if you worry that you might be going too far, you have already not gone far enough. If everybody laughs, you have failed.		Christopher Hitchens
1f3b738	I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-s..	responsibility religion scapegoating immorality forgiveness redemption sin	Christopher Hitchens
0ee1e67	An old joke has an Oxford professor meeting an American former graduate student and asking him what he's working on these days. 'My thesis is on the survival of the class system in the United States.' 'Oh really, that's interesting: one didn't think there was a class system in the United States.' 'Nobody does. That's how it survives.	humour united-states joke	Christopher Hitchens
f296f2e	An appreciation for irony.	virtues	Christopher Hitchens
d334c95	The finest fury is the most controlled.	music lonesome-death-of-hattie-carroll bob-dylan control fury	Christopher Hitchens
4ea984b	I want to urge you very strongly to travel as much as you can, and to evolve yourself as an internationalist. It's as important a part of your education as a radical as the reading of any book.		Christopher Hitchens
eafc625	A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless'...		Christopher Hitchens
f74b71c	For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: the ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one.	friendship	Christopher Hitchens
5964db6	There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.		Christopher Hitchens
54c5511	Nothing proves the man-made character of religion as obviously as the sick mind that designed hell.		Christopher Hitchens
800f84b	Faith. Closely followed--in view of the overall shortage of time--by patience.	faith death religion life virtues patience	Christopher Hitchens
496accc	It especially annoys me when racists are accused of 'discrimination.' The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members on one 'race' to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.		Christopher Hitchens
df3b541	And the pleasures and rewards of the intellect are inseparable from angst, uncertainty, conflict and even despair.		Christopher Hitchens
f17a2e1	Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building--as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg sat and said to my face over a table at La Tomate in Washington not two years ago--and lands on a bystander in the street below. Now, make the burning building be Europe, and the luckless man underneath be the Palestinian Arabs. Is this a historical injustice? Has the man below been made a victim, with infinite cause of complaint and indefinite..	injustice history analogies jaffa jeff-goldberg crusades victims washington israeli-palestinian-conflict europe arabs colonialism israel jews palestine palestinians	Christopher Hitchens
a359604	Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerate people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that..		Christopher Hitchens
bd47584	It's probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory	pain	Christopher Hitchens
ba40d76	The most educated person in the world now has to admit-- I shall not say confess-- that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more.		Christopher Hitchens
1bdc5e5	I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the ..	myth christianity jesus religion marx moses einstein prophets freud christians muslims muhammad messiah theism atheism islam humans antisemitism jews	Christopher Hitchens
26b72f6	What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation.	history politics conflict government power	Christopher Hitchens
ec616cf	R]eligion was the race's first (and worst) attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the species could do at a time when we had no concept of physics, chemistry, biology or medicine. We did not know that we lived on a round planet, let alone that the said planet was in orbit in a minor and obscure solar system, which was also on the edge of an unimaginably vast cosmos that was exploding away from its original source of energy. We di..	religion	Christopher Hitchens
fd8db8a	If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.	christianity death religion god humor hitchens gods atheism atheist	Christopher Hitchens
b55c95f	When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen.	irony woody-allen maimonides judaism messiah	Christopher Hitchens
e2d4922	1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger's undisclosed reason for the 'tilt' was the supposed but never materialised 'brokerage' offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the co..	war india murder morality politics 1971-bangladesh-atrocities 1972-nixon-visit-to-china 1973-chilean-coup-d-etat 1974 1975 bangladesh bangladesh-liberation-war chile china-pakistan-relations doctors-of-philosophy east-timor ecclesiastical-coup foreign-policy-of-the-us greek-cypriots indo-pakistani-war-of-1971 indonesia indonesian-national-armed-forces israeli-lebanese-conflict jakarta junta kurdish-iraqi-conflict lebanon military-of-chile mohammad-reza-pahlavi monroe-leigh news-leaks pakistan-united-states-relations portugual portuguese-empire rene-schneider richard-nixon salvador-allende schneider-doctrine second-kurdish-iraqi-war shah sino-american-relations slaughter thomas-d-boyatt yahya-khan central-intelligence-agency iran makarios-iii international-law athens henry-kissinger turkish-invasion-of-cyprus turkey partition foreign-policy missionaries war-crimes coup-d-état walter-isaacson kurdistan marxism iran-iraq-war iraqi-kurdistan kurdish-people iraq pakistan saddam-hussein cyprus united-states doctors civil-war fascism assassination democracy diplomacy israel china greece refugees	Christopher Hitchens
55330b4	It's often a bad sign when people defend themselves against charges which haven't been made.	defensiveness noam-chomsky september-11-attacks	Christopher Hitchens
590d79d	I had become too accustomed to the pseudo-Left new style, whereby if your opponent thought he had identified your lowest possible motive, he was quite certain that he had isolated the only real one. This vulgar method, which is now the norm and the standard in much non-Left journalism as well, is designed to have the effect of making any noisy moron into a master analyst.	fallacy argumentation journalism leftism	Christopher Hitchens
ca07032	The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.	racism	Christopher Hitchens
3e18f6d	I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.	time english-language french	Christopher Hitchens
ee2657e	If you want to stay in for the long haul, and lead a life that is free from illusions either propagated by you or embraced by you, then I suggest you learn to recognize and avoid the symptoms of the zealot and the person who knows he is right. For the dissenter, the skeptical mentality is at least as important as any armor of principle.	freethought skepticism	Christopher Hitchens
01c5670	Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all.		Christopher Hitchens
9c5ed18	How ya doin'?' I always think, What kind of a question is that?, and I always reply, 'A bit early to tell.	irony questions	Christopher Hitchens
5de6d2c	I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can be always relied upon to do		Christopher Hitchens
9e8869d	If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The only real philosophical answer is automatically self-contradictory: 'Only if I did not know that I was doing so.' To go through the entire experience once more would be banal and Sisyphean--even if it did build muscle--whereas to wish to be young again and to have the benefit of one's learned and acquired existence is not at all to wish for a re..	money opportunity youth women life philosophy conundrums groundhog-day self-contradiction tiresias wishful-thinking parents desire old-age	Christopher Hitchens
bb57dc7	Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where--as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed no..	war history christianity ancestry antisemitism arabs armageddon arthur-balfour bedouin bolshevism britain colonialism crimea crimean-war democracy diplomacy ethnic-cleansing fanaticism france free-speech house-arrest israel jerusalem jews leftism london palestine palestinians persecution raimonda-tawil ramallah religious-extremism russia territory world-war-i zealotry philip-roth secularism oppression torture	Christopher Hitchens
cd00c9c	I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be sel..	rebellion words independence youth contrarianism dissidents harold-rosenberg honorifics hormones oppositionism memoirs free-thought dissent	Christopher Hitchens
985a0d7	T]he very multiculturalism and multiethnicity that brought Salman to the West, and that also made us richer by Hanif Kureishi, Nadeem Aslam, Vikram Seth, Monica Ali, and many others, is now one of the disguises for a culturalism, based on moral relativism and moral blackmail (in addition to some more obvious blackmail of the less moral sort) whereby the Enlightenment has been redefined as 'white' and 'oppressive,' mass illegal immigration ..	multiculturalism rushdie relativism	Christopher Hitchens
52b590f	I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator -- that's beyond my conceit. I therefore have no choice but to find something suspect even in the humblest believer. Even the most humane and compassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville..	religion authoritarianism	Christopher Hitchens
8fc4890	Your ideal authors ought to pull you from the foundering of your previous existence, not smilingly guide you into a friendly and peaceable harbor.		Christopher Hitchens
5cef7f8	Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a m..	irony history humour politics 1968 1970s 1980s 1988 allegiance arrest bad-crowds charter-77 gorbachev kafka nelson-mandela vaclav-havel zdenek-mlynar prague moscow czechoslovakia arguments exile commitment bureaucracy boredom clichés generosity dissent totalitarianism detention mediocrity charm russia communism loyalty police	Christopher Hitchens
b03b84c	Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee; a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder.		Christopher Hitchens
76ea107	In one way, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me."	philosophy	Christopher Hitchens
fdf982e	We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books.		Christopher Hitchens

6a75b18

The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on--only henceforth in my absence. (It's the second of those thoughts: the edition of the newspaper that will come out on the day after I have gone, that is the more distressing.) Much more horr..

heaven death life obituary meaning-of-life eternal-life atheism despair hell

Christopher Hitchens

14f7114

And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely 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.

faith reason religion science scepticism belief principles

Christopher Hitchens

a041cd9

Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expect..

myth responsibility morality reason fear love truth atheist-argument christianity-is-immoral christopher-hitchens compulsory divine-dictatorship eternal-punishment great-atheist-argument hitchens hitchslap homo-sapiens immoral-christianity love-your-neighbor supreme-being dawkins indifference human-sacrifice eternal-father totalitarianism debate dictatorship richard-dawkins wishful-thinking belief evidence ethics atheism health intellect atheist redemption crime guilt

Christopher Hitchens

40e3598

A rule of thumb with humor; if you worry that you might be going too far, you have already not gone far enough. If everybody laughs, you have failed.

Christopher Hitchens

1f3b738

I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form. There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be self-s..

responsibility religion scapegoating immorality forgiveness redemption sin

Christopher Hitchens

0ee1e67

An old joke has an Oxford professor meeting an American former graduate student and asking him what he's working on these days. 'My thesis is on the survival of the class system in the United States.' 'Oh really, that's interesting: one didn't think there was a class system in the United States.' 'Nobody does. That's how it survives.

humour united-states joke

Christopher Hitchens

f296f2e

An appreciation for irony.

virtues

Christopher Hitchens

d334c95

The finest fury is the most controlled.

music lonesome-death-of-hattie-carroll bob-dylan control fury

Christopher Hitchens

4ea984b

I want to urge you very strongly to travel as much as you can, and to evolve yourself as an internationalist. It's as important a part of your education as a radical as the reading of any book.

Christopher Hitchens

eafc625

A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless'...

Christopher Hitchens

f74b71c

For me, to remember friendship is to recall those conversations that it seemed a sin to break off: the ones that made the sacrifice of the following day a trivial one.

friendship

Christopher Hitchens

5964db6

There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.

Christopher Hitchens

54c5511

Nothing proves the man-made character of religion as obviously as the sick mind that designed hell.

Christopher Hitchens

800f84b

Faith. Closely followed--in view of the overall shortage of time--by patience.

faith death religion life virtues patience

Christopher Hitchens

496accc

It especially annoys me when racists are accused of 'discrimination.' The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members on one 'race' to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.

Christopher Hitchens

df3b541

And the pleasures and rewards of the intellect are inseparable from angst, uncertainty, conflict and even despair.

Christopher Hitchens

f17a2e1

Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building--as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg sat and said to my face over a table at La Tomate in Washington not two years ago--and lands on a bystander in the street below. Now, make the burning building be Europe, and the luckless man underneath be the Palestinian Arabs. Is this a historical injustice? Has the man below been made a victim, with infinite cause of complaint and indefinite..

injustice history analogies jaffa jeff-goldberg crusades victims washington israeli-palestinian-conflict europe arabs colonialism israel jews palestine palestinians

Christopher Hitchens

a359604

Here is the point about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true - that religion has caused innumerate people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that..

Christopher Hitchens

bd47584

It's probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory

pain

Christopher Hitchens

ba40d76

The most educated person in the world now has to admit-- I shall not say confess-- that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more.

Christopher Hitchens

1bdc5e5

I think I have a very good idea why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring. Christianity and Islam, theistic though they may claim to be, are both based on the fetishizing of human primates: Jesus in one case and Mohammed in the other. Neither of these figures can be called exactly historical but both have one thing in common even in their quasi-mythical dimension. Both of them were first encountered by the ..

myth christianity jesus religion marx moses einstein prophets freud christians muslims muhammad messiah theism atheism islam humans antisemitism jews

Christopher Hitchens

26b72f6

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

history politics conflict government power

Christopher Hitchens

ec616cf

R]eligion was the race's first (and worst) attempt to make sense of reality. It was the best the species could do at a time when we had no concept of physics, chemistry, biology or medicine. We did not know that we lived on a round planet, let alone that the said planet was in orbit in a minor and obscure solar system, which was also on the edge of an unimaginably vast cosmos that was exploding away from its original source of energy. We di..

religion

Christopher Hitchens

fd8db8a

If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.

christianity death religion god humor hitchens gods atheism atheist

Christopher Hitchens

b55c95f

When Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' we see the origin of every Jewish shrug from Spinoza to Woody Allen.

irony woody-allen maimonides judaism messiah

Christopher Hitchens

e2d4922

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger's undisclosed reason for the 'tilt' was the supposed but never materialised 'brokerage' offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the co..

war india murder morality politics 1971-bangladesh-atrocities 1972-nixon-visit-to-china 1973-chilean-coup-d-etat 1974 1975 bangladesh bangladesh-liberation-war chile china-pakistan-relations doctors-of-philosophy east-timor ecclesiastical-coup foreign-policy-of-the-us greek-cypriots indo-pakistani-war-of-1971 indonesia indonesian-national-armed-forces israeli-lebanese-conflict jakarta junta kurdish-iraqi-conflict lebanon military-of-chile mohammad-reza-pahlavi monroe-leigh news-leaks pakistan-united-states-relations portugual portuguese-empire rene-schneider richard-nixon salvador-allende schneider-doctrine second-kurdish-iraqi-war shah sino-american-relations slaughter thomas-d-boyatt yahya-khan central-intelligence-agency iran makarios-iii international-law athens henry-kissinger turkish-invasion-of-cyprus turkey partition foreign-policy missionaries war-crimes coup-d-état walter-isaacson kurdistan marxism iran-iraq-war iraqi-kurdistan kurdish-people iraq pakistan saddam-hussein cyprus united-states doctors civil-war fascism assassination democracy diplomacy israel china greece refugees

Christopher Hitchens

55330b4

It's often a bad sign when people defend themselves against charges which haven't been made.

defensiveness noam-chomsky september-11-attacks

Christopher Hitchens

590d79d

I had become too accustomed to the pseudo-Left new style, whereby if your opponent thought he had identified your lowest possible motive, he was quite certain that he had isolated the only real one. This vulgar method, which is now the norm and the standard in much non-Left journalism as well, is designed to have the effect of making any noisy moron into a master analyst.

fallacy argumentation journalism leftism

Christopher Hitchens

ca07032

The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.

racism

Christopher Hitchens

3e18f6d

I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.

time english-language french

Christopher Hitchens

ee2657e

If you want to stay in for the long haul, and lead a life that is free from illusions either propagated by you or embraced by you, then I suggest you learn to recognize and avoid the symptoms of the zealot and the person who knows he is right. For the dissenter, the skeptical mentality is at least as important as any armor of principle.

freethought skepticism

Christopher Hitchens

01c5670

Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all.

Christopher Hitchens

9c5ed18

How ya doin'?' I always think, What kind of a question is that?, and I always reply, 'A bit early to tell.

irony questions

Christopher Hitchens

5de6d2c

I leave it to the faithful to burn each other's churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can be always relied upon to do

Christopher Hitchens

9e8869d

If you were offered the chance to live your own life again, would you seize the opportunity? The only real philosophical answer is automatically self-contradictory: 'Only if I did not know that I was doing so.' To go through the entire experience once more would be banal and Sisyphean--even if it did build muscle--whereas to wish to be young again and to have the benefit of one's learned and acquired existence is not at all to wish for a re..

money opportunity youth women life philosophy conundrums groundhog-day self-contradiction tiresias wishful-thinking parents desire old-age

Christopher Hitchens

bb57dc7

Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where--as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed no..

war history christianity ancestry antisemitism arabs armageddon arthur-balfour bedouin bolshevism britain colonialism crimea crimean-war democracy diplomacy ethnic-cleansing fanaticism france free-speech house-arrest israel jerusalem jews leftism london palestine palestinians persecution raimonda-tawil ramallah religious-extremism russia territory world-war-i zealotry philip-roth secularism oppression torture

Christopher Hitchens

cd00c9c

I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be sel..

rebellion words independence youth contrarianism dissidents harold-rosenberg honorifics hormones oppositionism memoirs free-thought dissent

Christopher Hitchens

985a0d7

T]he very multiculturalism and multiethnicity that brought Salman to the West, and that also made us richer by Hanif Kureishi, Nadeem Aslam, Vikram Seth, Monica Ali, and many others, is now one of the disguises for a culturalism, based on moral relativism and moral blackmail (in addition to some more obvious blackmail of the less moral sort) whereby the Enlightenment has been redefined as 'white' and 'oppressive,' mass illegal immigration ..

multiculturalism rushdie relativism

Christopher Hitchens

52b590f

I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the universe and its creator -- that's beyond my conceit. I therefore have no choice but to find something suspect even in the humblest believer. Even the most humane and compassionate of the monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville..

religion authoritarianism

Christopher Hitchens

8fc4890

Your ideal authors ought to pull you from the foundering of your previous existence, not smilingly guide you into a friendly and peaceable harbor.

Christopher Hitchens

5cef7f8

Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a m..

irony history humour politics 1968 1970s 1980s 1988 allegiance arrest bad-crowds charter-77 gorbachev kafka nelson-mandela vaclav-havel zdenek-mlynar prague moscow czechoslovakia arguments exile commitment bureaucracy boredom clichés generosity dissent totalitarianism detention mediocrity charm russia communism loyalty police

Christopher Hitchens

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Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee; a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder.

Christopher Hitchens

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In one way, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me."

philosophy

Christopher Hitchens

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We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books.

Christopher Hitchens