Search quotes

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
55f0ed6	The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has--from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.	independence partisanship politics radicalism	Christopher Hitchens
8880d78	An individual deficient in the sense of humor represents more of a challenge to our idea of the human than a person of subnormal intelligence		Christopher Hitchens
def9c1b	The ability to master other languages (which would have hugely enhanced the scope of these answers). Fully conscious, and either fighting or reciting (or fooling around). The way in which it makes former admirers search for neutral words.	death languages polyglots questionnaires talents ugliness	Christopher Hitchens
fc6edc9	In our time, the symbol of state intrusion into the private life is the mandatory urine test.	drugs liberty privacy urinalysis war-on-drugs	Christopher Hitchens
bc0802b	The burden therefore rests with the American legal community and with the American human-rights lobbies and non-governmental organizations. They can either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by a notorious war criminal and lawbreaker, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold everyone else. The current state of suspended animation, however, cannot last. If the courts an..	henry-kissinger human-rights international-human-rights-law international-law law united-states war-crimes	Christopher Hitchens
6fcfdc8	As the many male victims of rape in the regime's disgusting jails can testify, this state-run pathology of sexual repression and sexual sadism is not content to degrade women only.	iran prison-rape rape sexual-repression sodomy women-s-rights	Christopher Hitchens
e804f42	It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind.	christianity jerry-falwell jesse-jackson pluralism religion religious-right separation-of-church-and-state united-states united-states-constitution	Christopher Hitchens
ff26166	Many governments employ torture but this was the first time that the element of Saturnalia and pornography in the process had been made so clear to me. If you care to imagine what any inadequate or cruel man might do, given unlimited power over a woman, then anything that you can bring yourself to suspect was what became routine in ESMA, the Navy Mechanics School that became the headquarters of the business. I talked to Dr. Emilio Mignone, ..	esma hell sadism sexual-abuse torture	Christopher Hitchens
fe7dc66	It is often said, inside the Church and out of it, that there is something grotesque about lectures on the sexual life when delivered by those who have shunned it. Given the way that the Church forbids women to preach, this point is usually made about men. But given how much this Church allows the fanatical to preach, it might be added that the call to go forth and multiply, and to take no thought for the morrow, sounds grotesque when utt..	church mother-teresa sexual-life	Christopher Hitchens
0b961df	Evolution is, as well as smarter than we are, infinitely more callous and cruel, and also capricious.		Christopher Hitchens
d3f0b2e	Hardest of all, as one becomes older, is to accept that sapient remarks can be drawn from the most unwelcome or seemingly improbable sources, and that the apparently more trustworthy sources can lead one astray.	ageing henry-kissinger old-age sources wisdom	Christopher Hitchens
8c1a0c7	If the Palestinian people really wish to decide that they will battle to the very end to prevent partition or annexation of even an inch of their ancestral soil, then I have to concede that that is their right. I even think that a sixty-year rather botched experiment in marginal quasi-statehood is something that the Jewish people could consider abandoning. It represents barely an instant in our drawn-out and arduous history, and it's alread..	final-solution gaza israel israeli-palestinian-conflict jews judaea-and-samaria palestine palestinians partition sinai suicide-attack tel-aviv ze-ev-jabotinsky	Christopher Hitchens
276b81e	How is the United States at once the most conservative and commercial AND the most revolutionary society on Earth?	conservatism radicalism united-states	Christopher Hitchens
a20945f	I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire, who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.		Christopher Hitchens
d429c40	At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelievers and in any case contemptuous of Christianity. I have my own differences with both of these savants, but is the Republican Party really prepared to disown such modern intellectuals as it can claim, in favor of a shallow, demagogic and above all sectarian religiosity? Perhaps one could phrase the same question in two further ways. At the l..	2001 2003 american-jews atheism ayn-rand biblical-literalism christian-fundamentalism christian-right christianity creationism democratic-party-united-states evolution fundamentalism jerry-falwell jesus jews leo-strauss pat-robertson politics religion republican-party-united-states sectarianism september-11-attacks united-states us-elections-2000 william-jennings-bryan world-trade-center	Christopher Hitchens
9e794b4	Today I want to puke when I hear the word 'radical' applied so slothfully and stupidly to Islamist murderers; the most plainly reactionary people in the world.	islamism radicalism	Christopher Hitchens
9a4fa18	The idea of a utopian state on earth, perhaps modeled on some heavenly ideal, is very hard to efface and has led people to commit terrible crimes in the name of the ideal.		Christopher Hitchens
6e36b8e	The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.	atheism death inspirational life	Christopher Hitchens
ccd8ff6	There but for the grace of God,' said John Bradford in the sixteenth century, on seeing wretches led to execution, 'go I.' What this apparently compassionate observation really means--not that it really 'means' anything--is, 'There by the grace of God goes someone else.		Christopher Hitchens
cc9d1dc	The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.	law tyranny	Christopher Hitchens
2867383	Flaubert was right when he said that our use of language is like a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we need to move the very stars to pity.		Christopher Hitchens
d322dc9	Forget it. Never explain; never apologize. You can either write posthumously or you can't.	literature nadine-gordimer writing	Christopher Hitchens
3caf720	If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the nineteenth province of Iraq. Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority of those that intone the "peace movement"."	leftism noninterventionism pacifism peace-movement	Christopher Hitchens
28d23ab	Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.	fun pressure wit	Christopher Hitchens
5bb6eb0	George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tacti..	al-shifa-pharmaceutical-factory anti-war ba-ath-party bill-clinton democratic-party-united-states evil george-w-bush iraq iraq-war leftism liberalism madeleine-albright moral-absolutism moral-relativism morality opposition-to-the-iraq-war peace-movement presidency-of-bill-clinton presidency-of-george-w-bush rwanda rwandan-genocide saddam-hussein sudan united-nations united-states	Christopher Hitchens
35b437f	Beware what you wish for, unless you have the grace to hope that your luck can be shared.	hopes luck	Christopher Hitchens
58c70b9	In the very recent past, we have seen the Church of Rome befouled by its complicity with the unpardonable sin of child rape, or, as it might be phrased in Latin form, "no child's behind left."		Christopher Hitchens
0e50e5c	It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of s..	1960s countryside cruelty earl-of-bessborough england europe gassing hampshire hiroshima jane-austen literary-criticism literature mansions massacre meadow myxomatosis napoleon napoleonic-wars new-forest persuasion-novel quiet rabbits richard-adams silence sussex theatre-of-ancient-greece townships war-memorials watership-down wind-in-the-willows women world-war-ii	Christopher Hitchens
40e35f8	People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just vanished. The rumors of what had happened to them were fantastic and bizarre though, as it turned out, they were only an understatement of the real thing. Before going to see General Videla [...], I went to [...] check in with : the black-draped mothers who paraded, every week, with pictures of their missing loved ones in the Plaza Mayo. ( ..	christianity death-squads einstein freud jacobo-timerman jorge-rafael-videla marx	Christopher Hitchens
793d0ac	In a Pyongyang restaurant, don't ever ask for a doggie bag.	dogs humour korean-cuisine north-korea pyongyang	Christopher Hitchens
6abd487	When I was a schoolboy in England, the old bound volumes of Kipling in the library had gilt swastikas embossed on their covers. The symbol's 'hooks' were left-handed, as opposed to the right-handed ones of the Nazi , but for a boy growing up after 1945 the shock of encountering the emblem at all was a memorable one. I later learned that in the mid-1930s Kipling had caused this 'signature' to be removed from all his future editions. Having ..	1945 adolf-hitler england europe fascism fascism-in-europe hinduism nazis rudyard-kipling school swastikas symbols world-war-ii	Christopher Hitchens
9dc891a	At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too melodramatic or self-centred a way of saying that I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinions may be.	death independence nadine-gordimer writing	Christopher Hitchens
41980cb	Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the Sta..	alcohol alcoholism andrei-gromyko antisemitism astrology astronomy beijing birth birthdays breastfeeding britain censorship china communism communist-party-of-china corfu corfu-channel-incident czechoslovakia damascus diplomacy ernst-von-weizsacker flushing-meadows flushing-queens gods history hitler horoscopes hosni-zayim international-court-of-justice israel jews mao mars nato nazis newspapers nuremberg passover-seder prohibition the-hague united-nations united-states ussr vatican war	Christopher Hitchens
01bd2d9	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, steppe..	fathers mortality sons writers	Christopher Hitchens
2855ac2	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.		Christopher Hitchens
01f5437	Since I speak and write about this a good deal, I am often asked at public meetings, in what sometimes seems to me a rather prurient way, whether I myself or my family have 'ever been threatened' by jihadists. My answer is that yes, I have, and so has everyone else in the audience, if they have paid enough attention to the relevant bin-Ladenist broadcasts to notice the fact.	islamism jihadism osama-bin-laden personal-questions terrorism	Christopher Hitchens
2145d3f	In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.	christianity edward-said humility london palestine religion rushdie	Christopher Hitchens
e7778f1	A sure sign of ineptitude and malice is manifested when one's attacker is willing to cover himself with mud in order to try and make some of it adhere to his target.	debate ineptitude malice norman-g-finkelstein smear-campaigns	Christopher Hitchens
117d60c	Should I, too, prefer the title of 'non-Jewish Jew'? For some time, I would have identified myself strongly with the attitude expressed by Rosa Luxemburg, writing from prison in 1917 to her anguished friend Mathilde Wurm: An inordinate proportion of the Marxists I have known would probably have formulated their own views in much the same way. It was almost a point of honor not to engage in 'thinking with the blood,' to borrow a notable phra..	africans compassion dh-lawrence empathy europeans internationalism jewish-question jews marxism mathilde-verne plantations prison race racism rootless-cosmopolitanism rosa-luxemburg suffering victims	Christopher Hitchens
6d322ee	It is pardonable for children to yell that they believe in fairies, but it is somehow sinister when the piping note shifts from the puerile to the senile.	fairies hero-worship john-f-kennedy kennedy-family politics puerility robert-dallek robert-f-kennedy senility united-states	Christopher Hitchens
2572673	It's quite a task to combat the absolutists and the relativists at the same time: to maintain that there is no totalitarian solution while also insisting that, yes, we on our side also have unalterable convictions and are willing to fight for them. After various past allegiances, I have come to believe that Karl Marx was rightist of all when he recommended continual doubt and self-criticism. Member in the skeptical faction or tendency is no..		Christopher Hitchens
531c100	Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen.	christianity end-time fundamentalism politics sarah-palin second-coming-of-christ united-states	Christopher Hitchens
a62b52c	The high ambition, therefore, seems to me to be this: That one should strive to combine the maximum of impatience with the maximum of skepticism, the maximum of hatred of injustice and irrationality with the maximum of ironic self-criticism. This would mean really deciding to learn from history rather than invoking or sloganising it.		Christopher Hitchens
7ca24cd	I was abruptly recognized as nonthreatening, brusquely advised to fuck off, and off I duly and promptly fucked.		Christopher Hitchens

55f0ed6

The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has--from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.

independence partisanship politics radicalism

Christopher Hitchens

8880d78

An individual deficient in the sense of humor represents more of a challenge to our idea of the human than a person of subnormal intelligence

Christopher Hitchens

def9c1b

The ability to master other languages (which would have hugely enhanced the scope of these answers). Fully conscious, and either fighting or reciting (or fooling around). The way in which it makes former admirers search for neutral words.

death languages polyglots questionnaires talents ugliness

Christopher Hitchens

fc6edc9

In our time, the symbol of state intrusion into the private life is the mandatory urine test.

drugs liberty privacy urinalysis war-on-drugs

Christopher Hitchens

bc0802b

The burden therefore rests with the American legal community and with the American human-rights lobbies and non-governmental organizations. They can either persist in averting their gaze from the egregious impunity enjoyed by a notorious war criminal and lawbreaker, or they can become seized by the exalted standards to which they continually hold everyone else. The current state of suspended animation, however, cannot last. If the courts an..

henry-kissinger human-rights international-human-rights-law international-law law united-states war-crimes

Christopher Hitchens

6fcfdc8

As the many male victims of rape in the regime's disgusting jails can testify, this state-run pathology of sexual repression and sexual sadism is not content to degrade women only.

iran prison-rape rape sexual-repression sodomy women-s-rights

Christopher Hitchens

e804f42

It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind.

christianity jerry-falwell jesse-jackson pluralism religion religious-right separation-of-church-and-state united-states united-states-constitution

Christopher Hitchens

ff26166

Many governments employ torture but this was the first time that the element of Saturnalia and pornography in the process had been made so clear to me. If you care to imagine what any inadequate or cruel man might do, given unlimited power over a woman, then anything that you can bring yourself to suspect was what became routine in ESMA, the Navy Mechanics School that became the headquarters of the business. I talked to Dr. Emilio Mignone, ..

esma hell sadism sexual-abuse torture

Christopher Hitchens

fe7dc66

It is often said, inside the Church and out of it, that there is something grotesque about lectures on the sexual life when delivered by those who have shunned it. Given the way that the Church forbids women to preach, this point is usually made about men. But given how much this Church allows the fanatical to preach, it might be added that the call to go forth and multiply, and to take no thought for the morrow, sounds grotesque when utt..

church mother-teresa sexual-life

Christopher Hitchens

0b961df

Evolution is, as well as smarter than we are, infinitely more callous and cruel, and also capricious.

Christopher Hitchens

d3f0b2e

Hardest of all, as one becomes older, is to accept that sapient remarks can be drawn from the most unwelcome or seemingly improbable sources, and that the apparently more trustworthy sources can lead one astray.

ageing henry-kissinger old-age sources wisdom

Christopher Hitchens

8c1a0c7

If the Palestinian people really wish to decide that they will battle to the very end to prevent partition or annexation of even an inch of their ancestral soil, then I have to concede that that is their right. I even think that a sixty-year rather botched experiment in marginal quasi-statehood is something that the Jewish people could consider abandoning. It represents barely an instant in our drawn-out and arduous history, and it's alread..

final-solution gaza israel israeli-palestinian-conflict jews judaea-and-samaria palestine palestinians partition sinai suicide-attack tel-aviv ze-ev-jabotinsky

Christopher Hitchens

276b81e

How is the United States at once the most conservative and commercial AND the most revolutionary society on Earth?

conservatism radicalism united-states

Christopher Hitchens

a20945f

I sympathize afresh with the mighty Voltaire, who, when badgered on his deathbed and urged to renounce the devil, murmured that this was no time to be making enemies.

Christopher Hitchens

d429c40

At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelievers and in any case contemptuous of Christianity. I have my own differences with both of these savants, but is the Republican Party really prepared to disown such modern intellectuals as it can claim, in favor of a shallow, demagogic and above all sectarian religiosity? Perhaps one could phrase the same question in two further ways. At the l..

2001 2003 american-jews atheism ayn-rand biblical-literalism christian-fundamentalism christian-right christianity creationism democratic-party-united-states evolution fundamentalism jerry-falwell jesus jews leo-strauss pat-robertson politics religion republican-party-united-states sectarianism september-11-attacks united-states us-elections-2000 william-jennings-bryan world-trade-center

Christopher Hitchens

9e794b4

Today I want to puke when I hear the word 'radical' applied so slothfully and stupidly to Islamist murderers; the most plainly reactionary people in the world.

islamism radicalism

Christopher Hitchens

9a4fa18

The idea of a utopian state on earth, perhaps modeled on some heavenly ideal, is very hard to efface and has led people to commit terrible crimes in the name of the ideal.

Christopher Hitchens

6e36b8e

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

atheism death inspirational life

Christopher Hitchens

ccd8ff6

There but for the grace of God,' said John Bradford in the sixteenth century, on seeing wretches led to execution, 'go I.' What this apparently compassionate observation really means--not that it really 'means' anything--is, 'There by the grace of God goes someone else.

Christopher Hitchens

cc9d1dc

The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.

law tyranny

Christopher Hitchens

2867383

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

Christopher Hitchens

d322dc9

Forget it. Never explain; never apologize. You can either write posthumously or you can't.

literature nadine-gordimer writing

Christopher Hitchens

3caf720

If the counsel of the peaceniks had been followed, Kuwait would today be the nineteenth province of Iraq. Bosnia would be a trampled and cleansed province of Greater Serbia, Kosovo would have been emptied of most of its inhabitants, and the Taliban would still be in power in Afghanistan. Yet nothing seems to disturb the contented air of moral superiority of those that intone the "peace movement"."

leftism noninterventionism pacifism peace-movement

Christopher Hitchens

28d23ab

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

fun pressure wit

Christopher Hitchens

5bb6eb0

George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tacti..

al-shifa-pharmaceutical-factory anti-war ba-ath-party bill-clinton democratic-party-united-states evil george-w-bush iraq iraq-war leftism liberalism madeleine-albright moral-absolutism moral-relativism morality opposition-to-the-iraq-war peace-movement presidency-of-bill-clinton presidency-of-george-w-bush rwanda rwandan-genocide saddam-hussein sudan united-nations united-states

Christopher Hitchens

35b437f

Beware what you wish for, unless you have the grace to hope that your luck can be shared.

hopes luck

Christopher Hitchens

58c70b9

In the very recent past, we have seen the Church of Rome befouled by its complicity with the unpardonable sin of child rape, or, as it might be phrased in Latin form, "no child's behind left."

Christopher Hitchens

0e50e5c

It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of s..

1960s countryside cruelty earl-of-bessborough england europe gassing hampshire hiroshima jane-austen literary-criticism literature mansions massacre meadow myxomatosis napoleon napoleonic-wars new-forest persuasion-novel quiet rabbits richard-adams silence sussex theatre-of-ancient-greece townships war-memorials watership-down wind-in-the-willows women world-war-ii

Christopher Hitchens

40e35f8

People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just vanished. The rumors of what had happened to them were fantastic and bizarre though, as it turned out, they were only an understatement of the real thing. Before going to see General Videla [...], I went to [...] check in with : the black-draped mothers who paraded, every week, with pictures of their missing loved ones in the Plaza Mayo. ( ..

christianity death-squads einstein freud jacobo-timerman jorge-rafael-videla marx

Christopher Hitchens

793d0ac

In a Pyongyang restaurant, don't ever ask for a doggie bag.

dogs humour korean-cuisine north-korea pyongyang

Christopher Hitchens

6abd487

When I was a schoolboy in England, the old bound volumes of Kipling in the library had gilt swastikas embossed on their covers. The symbol's 'hooks' were left-handed, as opposed to the right-handed ones of the Nazi , but for a boy growing up after 1945 the shock of encountering the emblem at all was a memorable one. I later learned that in the mid-1930s Kipling had caused this 'signature' to be removed from all his future editions. Having ..

1945 adolf-hitler england europe fascism fascism-in-europe hinduism nazis rudyard-kipling school swastikas symbols world-war-ii

Christopher Hitchens

9dc891a

At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too melodramatic or self-centred a way of saying that I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinions may be.

death independence nadine-gordimer writing

Christopher Hitchens

41980cb

Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the Sta..

alcohol alcoholism andrei-gromyko antisemitism astrology astronomy beijing birth birthdays breastfeeding britain censorship china communism communist-party-of-china corfu corfu-channel-incident czechoslovakia damascus diplomacy ernst-von-weizsacker flushing-meadows flushing-queens gods history hitler horoscopes hosni-zayim international-court-of-justice israel jews mao mars nato nazis newspapers nuremberg passover-seder prohibition the-hague united-nations united-states ussr vatican war

Christopher Hitchens

01bd2d9

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, steppe..

fathers mortality sons writers

Christopher Hitchens

2855ac2

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.

Christopher Hitchens

01f5437

Since I speak and write about this a good deal, I am often asked at public meetings, in what sometimes seems to me a rather prurient way, whether I myself or my family have 'ever been threatened' by jihadists. My answer is that yes, I have, and so has everyone else in the audience, if they have paid enough attention to the relevant bin-Ladenist broadcasts to notice the fact.

islamism jihadism osama-bin-laden personal-questions terrorism

Christopher Hitchens

2145d3f

In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.

christianity edward-said humility london palestine religion rushdie

Christopher Hitchens

e7778f1

A sure sign of ineptitude and malice is manifested when one's attacker is willing to cover himself with mud in order to try and make some of it adhere to his target.

debate ineptitude malice norman-g-finkelstein smear-campaigns

Christopher Hitchens

117d60c

Should I, too, prefer the title of 'non-Jewish Jew'? For some time, I would have identified myself strongly with the attitude expressed by Rosa Luxemburg, writing from prison in 1917 to her anguished friend Mathilde Wurm: An inordinate proportion of the Marxists I have known would probably have formulated their own views in much the same way. It was almost a point of honor not to engage in 'thinking with the blood,' to borrow a notable phra..

africans compassion dh-lawrence empathy europeans internationalism jewish-question jews marxism mathilde-verne plantations prison race racism rootless-cosmopolitanism rosa-luxemburg suffering victims

Christopher Hitchens

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It is pardonable for children to yell that they believe in fairies, but it is somehow sinister when the piping note shifts from the puerile to the senile.

fairies hero-worship john-f-kennedy kennedy-family politics puerility robert-dallek robert-f-kennedy senility united-states

Christopher Hitchens

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It's quite a task to combat the absolutists and the relativists at the same time: to maintain that there is no totalitarian solution while also insisting that, yes, we on our side also have unalterable convictions and are willing to fight for them. After various past allegiances, I have come to believe that Karl Marx was rightist of all when he recommended continual doubt and self-criticism. Member in the skeptical faction or tendency is no..

Christopher Hitchens

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Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen.

christianity end-time fundamentalism politics sarah-palin second-coming-of-christ united-states

Christopher Hitchens

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The high ambition, therefore, seems to me to be this: That one should strive to combine the maximum of impatience with the maximum of skepticism, the maximum of hatred of injustice and irrationality with the maximum of ironic self-criticism. This would mean really deciding to learn from history rather than invoking or sloganising it.

Christopher Hitchens

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I was abruptly recognized as nonthreatening, brusquely advised to fuck off, and off I duly and promptly fucked.

Christopher Hitchens