Search quotes

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
499d452	The politicized sponsors of this pseudoscientific nonsense should be ashamed to live, let alone die. If you want to take part in the "war" against cancer, and other terrible maladies, too, then join the battle against their lethal stupidity."		Christopher Hitchens
5a8bacd	Authors who moan with praise for their editors always seem to reek slightly of the Stockholm syndrome.	authorship editing	Christopher Hitchens
970b6f0	Like so many of life's varieties of experience, the novelty of a diagnosis of malignant cancer has a tendency to wear off. The thing begins to pall, even to become banal. One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word. And I don't so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely remindin..		Christopher Hitchens
b5d9411	Don't say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro.		Christopher Hitchens
ba590df	Religion invents a problem where none exists by describing the wicked as also made in the image of god and the sexually nonconformist as existing in a state of incurable mortal sin that can incidentally cause floods and earthquakes.		Christopher Hitchens
f9a54a4	To be against rationalization is not the same as to be opposed to reasoning.	logic rationalisation reason september-11-attacks	Christopher Hitchens
0277799	Saul Bellow: Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are able to see anything.		Christopher Hitchens
92351b6	If someone tells me that I've hurt their feelings, I say, 'I'm still waiting to hear what your point is.'		Christopher Hitchens
c75fe9e	What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that al..	bill-clinton corruption feminism gennifer-flowers hillary-clinton juanita-broaddrick kathleen-willey lies lincoln-bedroom monica-lewinsky oval-office perjury politics rape sex sleaze smear-campaign united-states united-states-elections-2008 white-house	Christopher Hitchens
f5332b3	Plainly, this unwillingness to give ground even on unimportant disagreements is the symptom of some deepseated insecurity, as was my one-time fondness for making teasing remarks (which I amended when I read Anthony Powell's matter-of-fact observation that teasing is an unfailing sign of misery within) and as is my very pronounced impatience. The struggle, therefore, is to try and cultivate the virtuous side of these shortcomings: to be a ge..	teasing	Christopher Hitchens
45a9a3a	As Shakespeare put it in 'King Lear,' the policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash.		Christopher Hitchens
0a7873e	The problem with open-mindedness is that it can become empty-mindedness		Christopher Hitchens
807b0f1	If only religion an opiate. No known narcotic rots the brain so fast.	atheism cornel-west louis-farrakhan opium-of-the-people religion	Christopher Hitchens
f1fcccf	We can always be sure of one thing--that the messengers of discomfort and sacrifice will be stoned and pelted by those who wish to preserve at all costs their own contentment. This is not a lesson that is confined to the Testaments.	bible brave-new-world history martyrs old-testament prophets religion	Christopher Hitchens
4bdaf3d	You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels an..	christianity compassion guilt immorality justice morality punishment relavitism religion	Christopher Hitchens
2800aa0	As the cleansing ocean closes over bin Laden's carcass, may the earth lie lightly on the countless graves of those he sentenced without compunction to be burned alive or dismembered in the street.	death-of-osama-bin-laden fascism mass-murder obituary osama-bin-laden september-11-attacks	Christopher Hitchens
185a1cf	We are an adaptable species and this adaptability has enabled us to survive. However, adaptability can also constitute a threat; we may become habituated to certain dangers and fail to recognize them until it's too late. Nuclear armaments are the most conspicuous example; as you read this you are in effect wearing a military uniform and sitting in a very exposed trench. You exist at the whim of people whose power does not derive from your o..		Christopher Hitchens
ae03252	Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I'll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of Identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying "The Personal Is Political." It began as a sort of reaction to defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that ye..	humanity identity-politics politics regressives travel wise	Christopher Hitchens
5356892	The unspooling of the skein of the genome has effectively abolished racism and creationism, and the amazing findings of Hubble and Hawking have allowed us to guess at the origins of the cosmos. But how much more addictive is the familiar old garbage about tribe and nation and faith.		Christopher Hitchens
4cbed74	Many readers are familiar with the spirit and the letter of the definition of "prayer," as given by Ambrose Bierce in his Devil's Dictionary. It runs like this, and is extremely easy to comprehend: Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy. Everybody can see the joke that is lodged within this entry: The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters a..		Christopher Hitchens
8ec6c04	It is exactly the fear of revenge that motivates the deepest crimes, from the killing of the enemy's children lest they grow up to play their own part, to the erasure of the enemy's graveyards and holy places so that his hated name can be forgotten.	crime fear graveyards infanticide murder revenge	Christopher Hitchens
36ae357	Nobody knows how many North Koreans have died or are dying in the famine--some estimates by foreign-aid groups run as high as three million in the period from 1995 to 1998 alone--but the rotund, jowly face of Kim Il Sung still beams down contentedly from every wall, and the 58-year-old son looks as chubby as ever, even as his slenderized subjects are mustered to applaud him.	1996 1997 1998 aid death famine kim-il-sung kim-jong-il north-korea north-korean-famine propaganda	Christopher Hitchens
9184fc3	The matter on which I judge people is their willingness, or ability, to handle contradiction. Thus was better than Burke when it came to the principle of the French revolution, but Burke did and said magnificent things when it came to Ireland, India and America. One of them was in some ways a revolutionary conservative and the other was a conservative revolutionary. It's important to try and contain multitudes. One of my influences was Dr..	charles-lindbergh collectivism conservatism contradiction edmund-burke free-thought french-revolution gore-vidal humanism india individualism influence ireland israel israel-shahak partisanship politics radicalism revolution spinozism thomas-paine united-states	Christopher Hitchens
ca24bff	He was so much the picture of different kinds of assimilation that it was almost a case of multiple personalities.	edward-said multiple-personalities personalities	Christopher Hitchens
438e578	Now, I have always wanted to agree with Lady Bracknell that there is no earthly use for the upper and lower classes unless they set each other a good example. But I shouldn't pretend that the consensus itself was any of my concern. It was absurd and slightly despicable, in the first decade of Thatcher and Reagan, to hear former and actual radicals intone piously against 'the politics of confrontation.' I suppose that, if this collection has..	england margaret-thatcher oscar-wilde political-radicalism politics ronald-reagan social-class social-structure-of-the-uk the-importance-of-being-earnest united-kingdom united-states	Christopher Hitchens
c437587	Pettiness often leads both to error and to the digging of a trap for oneself. Wondering (which I am sure he didn't) 'if by the 1990s [Hitchens] was morphing into someone I didn't quite recognize", Blumenthal recalls with horror the night that I 'gave' a farewell party for Martin Walker of the	argumentation betrayal bill-clinton diana-princess-of-wales england friendship journalism london martin-walker-reporter marty-peretz mother-teresa new-york nightline oxford pettiness politics presidency-of-bill-clinton sidney-blumenthal television the-guardian the-new-republic united-states university-of-oxford	Christopher Hitchens
ea51db2	All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable. I felt this when sitting in the old Ottoman courtyards of Jerusalem, and I felt it even more when I saw the hideous 'Fort Condo' settlements that had been thrown up around the city in order to give the opposite impression. If the statelet was only based on a narrow strip of ..	israel israeli-palestinian-conflict jerusalem jews mediterranean-basin moses oil ottoman-empire palestine palestinians religion settlements	Christopher Hitchens
6dcbd8a	The forces of piety have always and everywhere been the sworn enemy of the open mind and the open book.	freethought piety rebellion religion strength wisdom	Christopher Hitchens
ba6dd2e	Try your hardest to combat atrophy and routine. To question The Obvious and the given is an essential element of the maxim 'de omnius dubitandum' [All is to be doubted].	contrarian doubt routine wisdom	Christopher Hitchens
a98f7b1	As to the 'Left' I'll say briefly why this was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the mo..	al-qaeda algeria central-intelligence-agency daniel-lapin democracy egypt federal-bureau-of-investigation george-w-bush humanism islam islamism jerry-falwell jihad leftism national-security pakistan pat-robertson saudi-arabia secularism september-11-attacks taliban terrorism working-class	Christopher Hitchens
645c8cf	Joseph Heller knew how the need to belong, and the need for security, can make people accept lethal and stupid conditions, and then act as if they had imposed them on themselves.		Christopher Hitchens
43b4e5f	There came an awful day when I picked up the phone and knew at once, as one does with some old friends even before they speak, that it was Edward. He sounded as if he were calling from the bottom of a well. I still thank my stars that I didn't say what I nearly said, because the good professor's phone pals were used to cheering or teasing him out of bouts of pessimism and insecurity when he would sometimes say ridiculous things like: 'I hop..	edward-said friends friendship insecurity leukemia pessimism self-pity	Christopher Hitchens
b3c9b0e	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. --Kingsley Amis		Christopher Hitchens
84549a9	' it used to be called, even by Jews. 'The Jewish Question.' I find I quite like this interrogative formulation, since the question--as Gertrude Stein once famously if terminally put it--may be more absorbing than the answer. Of course one is flirting with calamity in phrasing things this way, as I learned in school when the Irish question was discussed by some masters as the Irish 'problem.' Again, the word 'solution' can be as neutral as ..	gertrude-stein holocaust irish-question jewish-question jews problems questions solutions	Christopher Hitchens
0d2ece0	Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went into a protracted swoon during the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher decade, and shows scant sign of recovering a critical faculty--or indeed any faculty whatever, unless it is one of induced enthusiasm for a plausible consensus President. (We shall see whether it counts as progress for the same parrots to learn a new word.) And my own cohort, the left, ..	apoliticism argument atheism berlin bought-priesthood cape-coloureds cold-war communism conviction critical-thinking enlightenment euphemism eurocentricism faith film george-hw-bush george-orwell german-people germany groupthink hedonism humanism individualism irony journalism left-wing-politics lies literary-criticism literature los-angeles margaret-thatcher monotheism munich orthodoxy personality-politics politics polytheism populism postmodernism potus progress radical-politics religion right-wing-politics ronald-reagan russia science sectarianism self-love self-pity socialism solipsism south-africa soviet-union thomas-mann totalitarianism tribalism truth united-states xhosa-people zulu-people	Christopher Hitchens
7a97bb3	I went to interview some of these early Jewish colonial zealots--written off in those days as mere 'fringe' elements--and found that they called themselves or--it sounded just as bad in English--'The Bloc of the Faithful.' Why not just say 'Party of God' and have done with it? At least they didn't have the nerve to say that they stole other people's land because their own home in Poland or Belarus had been taken from them. They said they ..	belarus colonialism god guns gush-emunim hebron israel israeli-palestinian-conflict jews palestine palestinians poland religious-extremism squatters students yeshivas zionists	Christopher Hitchens
30acb86	The fervor and single-mindedness of this deification probably have no precedent in history. It's not like Duvalier or Assad passing the torch to the son and heir. It surpasses anything I have read about the Roman or Babylonian or even Pharaonic excesses. An estimated $2.68 was spent on ceremonies and monuments in the aftermath of Kim Il Sung's death. The concept is not that his son is his successor, but that his son is his . North Korea ..	ancient-egypt ancient-rome atheism babylon baekdu-mountain bashar-al-assad china dynasties egypt francois-duvalier hafez-al-assad haiti jean-claude-duvalier joseph-stalin khabarovsk kim-il-sung kim-jong-il kim-jong-suk miraculous-births mount-fuji mythology north-korea reincarnation religion rome russia syria	Christopher Hitchens
54773ad	But what [Orwell] illustrates, by his commitment to language as the partner of truth, is that 'views' do not really count; that it matters not what you think, but how you think; and that politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.	orwell politics principles truth	Christopher Hitchens
b0248aa	Remaining for a moment with the question of legality and illegality: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368, unanimously passed, explicitly recognized the right of the United States to self-defense and further called upon all member states 'to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the terrorist attacks. It added that 'those responsible for aiding, supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers and spon..	al-qaeda assassination barack-obama death-of-osama-bin-laden international-law islamism justice kofi-annan law osama-bin-laden pakistan quran right-to-self-defense self-defense september-11-attacks united-nations united-nations-security-council united-states united-states-navy-seals war	Christopher Hitchens
6187ba4	I absolutely refuse to associate myself with anyone who cannot discern the essential night-and-day difference between theocratic fascism and liberal secular democracy, even less do I want to engage with those who are incapable of recognizing the basic moral distinction between premeditated mass murder and unintentional killing.	collateral-damage false-equivalence moral-equivalence war-on-terror	Christopher Hitchens
84d5bae	The North Korean state was born at about the same time that Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, and one could almost believe that the holy father of the state, Kim Il Sung, was given a copy of the novel and asked if he could make it work in practice. Yet even Orwell did not dare to have it said that "Big Brother's" birth was attended by miraculous signs and portents - such as birds hailing the glorious event by singing in human words." ..		Christopher Hitchens
64ac51c	There still remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.		Christopher Hitchens
8a97632	To be charitable, one may admit that the religious often seem unaware of how insulting their main proposition actually is. Exchange views with a believer even for a short time, and let us make the assumption that this is a mild and decent believer who does not open the bidding by telling you that your unbelief will endanger your soul and condemn you to hell. It will not be long until you are politely asked how you can possibly know right fr..	morality religion	Christopher Hitchens
1317868	Of the numerous regrettable elements that go to make up the unlawful carnal-knowledge industry, I should single out for distinction the look of undisguised contempt that is often worn on the faces of its female staff. Some of the working 'hostesses' may have to simulate delight or even interest--itself a pretty cock-shriveling thought--but when these same ladies do the negotiating, they can shrug off the fake charm as a snake discards an un..	prostitution	Christopher Hitchens

499d452

The politicized sponsors of this pseudoscientific nonsense should be ashamed to live, let alone die. If you want to take part in the "war" against cancer, and other terrible maladies, too, then join the battle against their lethal stupidity."

Christopher Hitchens

5a8bacd

Authors who moan with praise for their editors always seem to reek slightly of the Stockholm syndrome.

authorship editing

Christopher Hitchens

970b6f0

Like so many of life's varieties of experience, the novelty of a diagnosis of malignant cancer has a tendency to wear off. The thing begins to pall, even to become banal. One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word. And I don't so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely remindin..

Christopher Hitchens

b5d9411

Don't say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of her life she really was a boy, in which case you have probably thrown away a better intro.

Christopher Hitchens

ba590df

Religion invents a problem where none exists by describing the wicked as also made in the image of god and the sexually nonconformist as existing in a state of incurable mortal sin that can incidentally cause floods and earthquakes.

Christopher Hitchens

f9a54a4

To be against rationalization is not the same as to be opposed to reasoning.

logic rationalisation reason september-11-attacks

Christopher Hitchens

0277799

Saul Bellow: Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are able to see anything.

Christopher Hitchens

92351b6

If someone tells me that I've hurt their feelings, I say, 'I'm still waiting to hear what your point is.'

Christopher Hitchens

c75fe9e

What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that al..

bill-clinton corruption feminism gennifer-flowers hillary-clinton juanita-broaddrick kathleen-willey lies lincoln-bedroom monica-lewinsky oval-office perjury politics rape sex sleaze smear-campaign united-states united-states-elections-2008 white-house

Christopher Hitchens

f5332b3

Plainly, this unwillingness to give ground even on unimportant disagreements is the symptom of some deepseated insecurity, as was my one-time fondness for making teasing remarks (which I amended when I read Anthony Powell's matter-of-fact observation that teasing is an unfailing sign of misery within) and as is my very pronounced impatience. The struggle, therefore, is to try and cultivate the virtuous side of these shortcomings: to be a ge..

teasing

Christopher Hitchens

45a9a3a

As Shakespeare put it in 'King Lear,' the policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash.

Christopher Hitchens

0a7873e

The problem with open-mindedness is that it can become empty-mindedness

Christopher Hitchens

807b0f1

If only religion an opiate. No known narcotic rots the brain so fast.

atheism cornel-west louis-farrakhan opium-of-the-people religion

Christopher Hitchens

f1fcccf

We can always be sure of one thing--that the messengers of discomfort and sacrifice will be stoned and pelted by those who wish to preserve at all costs their own contentment. This is not a lesson that is confined to the Testaments.

bible brave-new-world history martyrs old-testament prophets religion

Christopher Hitchens

4bdaf3d

You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels an..

christianity compassion guilt immorality justice morality punishment relavitism religion

Christopher Hitchens

2800aa0

As the cleansing ocean closes over bin Laden's carcass, may the earth lie lightly on the countless graves of those he sentenced without compunction to be burned alive or dismembered in the street.

death-of-osama-bin-laden fascism mass-murder obituary osama-bin-laden september-11-attacks

Christopher Hitchens

185a1cf

We are an adaptable species and this adaptability has enabled us to survive. However, adaptability can also constitute a threat; we may become habituated to certain dangers and fail to recognize them until it's too late. Nuclear armaments are the most conspicuous example; as you read this you are in effect wearing a military uniform and sitting in a very exposed trench. You exist at the whim of people whose power does not derive from your o..

Christopher Hitchens

ae03252

Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I'll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of Identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying "The Personal Is Political." It began as a sort of reaction to defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that ye..

humanity identity-politics politics regressives travel wise

Christopher Hitchens

5356892

The unspooling of the skein of the genome has effectively abolished racism and creationism, and the amazing findings of Hubble and Hawking have allowed us to guess at the origins of the cosmos. But how much more addictive is the familiar old garbage about tribe and nation and faith.

Christopher Hitchens

4cbed74

Many readers are familiar with the spirit and the letter of the definition of "prayer," as given by Ambrose Bierce in his Devil's Dictionary. It runs like this, and is extremely easy to comprehend: Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy. Everybody can see the joke that is lodged within this entry: The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters a..

Christopher Hitchens

8ec6c04

It is exactly the fear of revenge that motivates the deepest crimes, from the killing of the enemy's children lest they grow up to play their own part, to the erasure of the enemy's graveyards and holy places so that his hated name can be forgotten.

crime fear graveyards infanticide murder revenge

Christopher Hitchens

36ae357

Nobody knows how many North Koreans have died or are dying in the famine--some estimates by foreign-aid groups run as high as three million in the period from 1995 to 1998 alone--but the rotund, jowly face of Kim Il Sung still beams down contentedly from every wall, and the 58-year-old son looks as chubby as ever, even as his slenderized subjects are mustered to applaud him.

1996 1997 1998 aid death famine kim-il-sung kim-jong-il north-korea north-korean-famine propaganda

Christopher Hitchens

9184fc3

The matter on which I judge people is their willingness, or ability, to handle contradiction. Thus was better than Burke when it came to the principle of the French revolution, but Burke did and said magnificent things when it came to Ireland, India and America. One of them was in some ways a revolutionary conservative and the other was a conservative revolutionary. It's important to try and contain multitudes. One of my influences was Dr..

charles-lindbergh collectivism conservatism contradiction edmund-burke free-thought french-revolution gore-vidal humanism india individualism influence ireland israel israel-shahak partisanship politics radicalism revolution spinozism thomas-paine united-states

Christopher Hitchens

ca24bff

He was so much the picture of different kinds of assimilation that it was almost a case of multiple personalities.

edward-said multiple-personalities personalities

Christopher Hitchens

438e578

Now, I have always wanted to agree with Lady Bracknell that there is no earthly use for the upper and lower classes unless they set each other a good example. But I shouldn't pretend that the consensus itself was any of my concern. It was absurd and slightly despicable, in the first decade of Thatcher and Reagan, to hear former and actual radicals intone piously against 'the politics of confrontation.' I suppose that, if this collection has..

england margaret-thatcher oscar-wilde political-radicalism politics ronald-reagan social-class social-structure-of-the-uk the-importance-of-being-earnest united-kingdom united-states

Christopher Hitchens

c437587

Pettiness often leads both to error and to the digging of a trap for oneself. Wondering (which I am sure he didn't) 'if by the 1990s [Hitchens] was morphing into someone I didn't quite recognize", Blumenthal recalls with horror the night that I 'gave' a farewell party for Martin Walker of the

argumentation betrayal bill-clinton diana-princess-of-wales england friendship journalism london martin-walker-reporter marty-peretz mother-teresa new-york nightline oxford pettiness politics presidency-of-bill-clinton sidney-blumenthal television the-guardian the-new-republic united-states university-of-oxford

Christopher Hitchens

ea51db2

All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable. I felt this when sitting in the old Ottoman courtyards of Jerusalem, and I felt it even more when I saw the hideous 'Fort Condo' settlements that had been thrown up around the city in order to give the opposite impression. If the statelet was only based on a narrow strip of ..

israel israeli-palestinian-conflict jerusalem jews mediterranean-basin moses oil ottoman-empire palestine palestinians religion settlements

Christopher Hitchens

6dcbd8a

The forces of piety have always and everywhere been the sworn enemy of the open mind and the open book.

freethought piety rebellion religion strength wisdom

Christopher Hitchens

ba6dd2e

Try your hardest to combat atrophy and routine. To question The Obvious and the given is an essential element of the maxim 'de omnius dubitandum' [All is to be doubted].

contrarian doubt routine wisdom

Christopher Hitchens

a98f7b1

As to the 'Left' I'll say briefly why this was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the mo..

al-qaeda algeria central-intelligence-agency daniel-lapin democracy egypt federal-bureau-of-investigation george-w-bush humanism islam islamism jerry-falwell jihad leftism national-security pakistan pat-robertson saudi-arabia secularism september-11-attacks taliban terrorism working-class

Christopher Hitchens

645c8cf

Joseph Heller knew how the need to belong, and the need for security, can make people accept lethal and stupid conditions, and then act as if they had imposed them on themselves.

Christopher Hitchens

43b4e5f

There came an awful day when I picked up the phone and knew at once, as one does with some old friends even before they speak, that it was Edward. He sounded as if he were calling from the bottom of a well. I still thank my stars that I didn't say what I nearly said, because the good professor's phone pals were used to cheering or teasing him out of bouts of pessimism and insecurity when he would sometimes say ridiculous things like: 'I hop..

edward-said friends friendship insecurity leukemia pessimism self-pity

Christopher Hitchens

b3c9b0e

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. --Kingsley Amis

Christopher Hitchens

84549a9

' it used to be called, even by Jews. 'The Jewish Question.' I find I quite like this interrogative formulation, since the question--as Gertrude Stein once famously if terminally put it--may be more absorbing than the answer. Of course one is flirting with calamity in phrasing things this way, as I learned in school when the Irish question was discussed by some masters as the Irish 'problem.' Again, the word 'solution' can be as neutral as ..

gertrude-stein holocaust irish-question jewish-question jews problems questions solutions

Christopher Hitchens

0d2ece0

Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went into a protracted swoon during the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher decade, and shows scant sign of recovering a critical faculty--or indeed any faculty whatever, unless it is one of induced enthusiasm for a plausible consensus President. (We shall see whether it counts as progress for the same parrots to learn a new word.) And my own cohort, the left, ..

apoliticism argument atheism berlin bought-priesthood cape-coloureds cold-war communism conviction critical-thinking enlightenment euphemism eurocentricism faith film george-hw-bush george-orwell german-people germany groupthink hedonism humanism individualism irony journalism left-wing-politics lies literary-criticism literature los-angeles margaret-thatcher monotheism munich orthodoxy personality-politics politics polytheism populism postmodernism potus progress radical-politics religion right-wing-politics ronald-reagan russia science sectarianism self-love self-pity socialism solipsism south-africa soviet-union thomas-mann totalitarianism tribalism truth united-states xhosa-people zulu-people

Christopher Hitchens

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I went to interview some of these early Jewish colonial zealots--written off in those days as mere 'fringe' elements--and found that they called themselves or--it sounded just as bad in English--'The Bloc of the Faithful.' Why not just say 'Party of God' and have done with it? At least they didn't have the nerve to say that they stole other people's land because their own home in Poland or Belarus had been taken from them. They said they ..

belarus colonialism god guns gush-emunim hebron israel israeli-palestinian-conflict jews palestine palestinians poland religious-extremism squatters students yeshivas zionists

Christopher Hitchens

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The fervor and single-mindedness of this deification probably have no precedent in history. It's not like Duvalier or Assad passing the torch to the son and heir. It surpasses anything I have read about the Roman or Babylonian or even Pharaonic excesses. An estimated $2.68 was spent on ceremonies and monuments in the aftermath of Kim Il Sung's death. The concept is not that his son is his successor, but that his son is his . North Korea ..

ancient-egypt ancient-rome atheism babylon baekdu-mountain bashar-al-assad china dynasties egypt francois-duvalier hafez-al-assad haiti jean-claude-duvalier joseph-stalin khabarovsk kim-il-sung kim-jong-il kim-jong-suk miraculous-births mount-fuji mythology north-korea reincarnation religion rome russia syria

Christopher Hitchens

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But what [Orwell] illustrates, by his commitment to language as the partner of truth, is that 'views' do not really count; that it matters not what you think, but how you think; and that politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.

orwell politics principles truth

Christopher Hitchens

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Remaining for a moment with the question of legality and illegality: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368, unanimously passed, explicitly recognized the right of the United States to self-defense and further called upon all member states 'to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the terrorist attacks. It added that 'those responsible for aiding, supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers and spon..

al-qaeda assassination barack-obama death-of-osama-bin-laden international-law islamism justice kofi-annan law osama-bin-laden pakistan quran right-to-self-defense self-defense september-11-attacks united-nations united-nations-security-council united-states united-states-navy-seals war

Christopher Hitchens

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I absolutely refuse to associate myself with anyone who cannot discern the essential night-and-day difference between theocratic fascism and liberal secular democracy, even less do I want to engage with those who are incapable of recognizing the basic moral distinction between premeditated mass murder and unintentional killing.

collateral-damage false-equivalence moral-equivalence war-on-terror

Christopher Hitchens

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The North Korean state was born at about the same time that Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, and one could almost believe that the holy father of the state, Kim Il Sung, was given a copy of the novel and asked if he could make it work in practice. Yet even Orwell did not dare to have it said that "Big Brother's" birth was attended by miraculous signs and portents - such as birds hailing the glorious event by singing in human words." ..

Christopher Hitchens

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There still remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.

Christopher Hitchens

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To be charitable, one may admit that the religious often seem unaware of how insulting their main proposition actually is. Exchange views with a believer even for a short time, and let us make the assumption that this is a mild and decent believer who does not open the bidding by telling you that your unbelief will endanger your soul and condemn you to hell. It will not be long until you are politely asked how you can possibly know right fr..

morality religion

Christopher Hitchens

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Of the numerous regrettable elements that go to make up the unlawful carnal-knowledge industry, I should single out for distinction the look of undisguised contempt that is often worn on the faces of its female staff. Some of the working 'hostesses' may have to simulate delight or even interest--itself a pretty cock-shriveling thought--but when these same ladies do the negotiating, they can shrug off the fake charm as a snake discards an un..

prostitution

Christopher Hitchens