Search quotes

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
5d7732a	Everything I love: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression.		Christopher Hitchens
fd0661d	Just to give you an idea, Proust's reply was 'To be separated from Mama.') I think that the lowest depth of misery ought to be distinguished from the highest pitch of anguish. In the lower depths come enforced idleness, sexual boredom, and/or impotence. At the highest pitch, the death of a friend or even the fear of the death of a child.	sex friends fear death proust-questionnaire impotence mothers idleness proust misery children	Christopher Hitchens
00256ef	To the ones that arise from urgent material needs.	sympathy materialism	Christopher Hitchens
fa48200	Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adherents and subjects. They more or less inherit them. Against this unearned patrimony there have always been speakers and writers who embody Einstein's injunction to 'remember your humanity and forget the rest.' It would be immodest to claim membership in this fraternity/sorority, but I hope not to have done anything to outrage it. Despite the i..	politics religion internationalism libertarianism social-class atheism secularism	Christopher Hitchens
924bca0	T]hose who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes.	cyprus-dispute makarios-iii henry-kissinger moral-responsibility guilt greece	Christopher Hitchens
71c07e9	As he defended the book one evening in the early 1980s at the Carnegie Endowment in New York, I knew that some of what he said was true enough, just as some of it was arguably less so. (Edward incautiously dismissed 'speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings or sabotage commercial airliners' as the feverish product of 'highly exaggerated stereotypes.') took as its point of departure the Iranian revolution, which by the..	human-rights women iran amputation carnegie-endowment covering-islam iranian-kurdistan iranian-revolution khomeini mohammed-reza-pahlavi shiism stoning women-and-religion women-in-iran women-in-islam theocracy september-11-attacks middle-east edward-said media womens-rights new-york	Christopher Hitchens
12e277f	Edward genially enough did not agree with what I said, but he didn't seem to admit my point, either. I wanted to press him harder so I veered close enough to the to point out that his life--the life of the mind, the life of the book collector and music lover and indeed of the gallery-goer, appreciator of the feminine and occasional --would become simply unlivable and unthinkable in an Islamic republic. Again, he could accede politely to..	feminism books music 1986 ad-hominem bernard-lewis first-intifada interview-magazine intifada islamic-republic leon-wieseltier middle-eastern-studies intellectualism theocracy cambridge arafat israeli-palestinian-conflict middle-east debate edward-said art palestine palestinians	Christopher Hitchens
7ac2ce6	I resolutely refuse to believe that the state of Edward's health had anything to do with this, and I don't say this only because I was once later accused of attacking him 'on his deathbed.' He was entirely lucid to the end, and the positions he took were easily recognizable by me as extensions or outgrowths of views he had expressed (and also declined to express) in the past. Alas, it is true that he was closer to the end than anybody knew ..	jane-austen prejudice fitzwilliam-darcy house-of-saud iraqis mendacity national-museum-of-iraq orientalism-book race-card the-atlantic vandalism pride-and-prejudice george-w-bush iraq iraq-war edward-said imperialism united-states cowardice london	Christopher Hitchens
9b3cc78	On my desk is an appeal from the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. It asks me to become a sponsor and donor of this soon-to-be-opened institution, while an accompanying leaflet has enticing photographs of Bob Dylan, Betty Friedan, Sandy Koufax, Irving Berlin, Estee Lauder, Barbra Streisand, Albert Einstein, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. There is something faintly about this, as there is in the habit of those Jewish ..	american-jews armenian-genocide armenians barbra-streisand betty-friedan britons estee-lauder gypsies irving-berlin isaac-bashevis-singer philadelphia sandy-koufax romans bob-dylan british-isles bigotry united-states race antisemitism jews	Christopher Hitchens
5b5515e	Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the locals really believe what they are told, and do they truly revere Fat Man and Little Boy? I have been a visiting writer in several authoritarian and totalitarian states, and usually the question answers itself. Someone in a cafe makes an offhand remark. A piece of ironic graffiti is scrawled in the men's room. Some group at the university issu..	irony grief death doublethink drinking-the-kool-aid graffiti jonestown koreans moonies ryugyong-hotel jokes indoctrination surveillance dissent totalitarianism tourism-in-north-korea south-korea authoritarianism pyongyang kim-il-sung kim-jong-il north-korea propaganda mind-control university	Christopher Hitchens
732aa00	the religion which treats its flock as a credulous plaything offers one of the cruelest spectacles that can be imagined: a human being in fear and doubt who is openly exploited to believe in the impossible		Christopher Hitchens
72bc4c7	Periclean Greeks employed the term , without any connotation of stupidity or subnormality, to mean simply 'a person indifferent to public affairs.' Obviously, there is something wanting in the apolitical personality. But we have also come to suspect the idiocy of politicization--of the professional pol and power broker. The two idiocies make a perfect match, with the apathy of the first permitting the depredations of the second.	politics apolitical athens pericles politics-of-the-united-states	Christopher Hitchens
2d02831	If I were to announce that I had suddenly converted to Catholicism, I know that Larry Taunton and Douglas Wilson would feel I had fallen into grievous error. On the other hand, if I were to join either of their Protestant evangelical groups, the followers of Rome would not think my soul was much safer than it is now, while a late-in-life decision to adhere to Judaism or Islam would inevitably lose me many prayers from both factions. I sympa..		Christopher Hitchens
191d11e	O]ne has to have endured a few decades before wanting, let alone needing, to embark on the project of recovering lost life. And I think it may be possible to review 'the chronicles of wasted time.' William Morris wrote in that men fight for things and then lose the battle, only to win it again in a shape and form that they had not expected, and then be compelled again to defend it under another name. We are all of us very good at self-per..	history life battles hegel self-persuasion william-morris self-delusion reminiscence	Christopher Hitchens
8c86c38	One notorious named Hiwa al-Balkhi, writing in ninth-century Persia, offered two hundred awkward questions to the faithful. He drew upon himself the usual thunderous curses--'may his name be forgotten, may his bones be worn to nothing'--along with detailed refutations and denunciations by Abraham ibn Ezra and others. These exciting anathemas, of course, ensured that his worrying 'questions' would remain current for as long as the Orthodox..	irony religion curses maimonides orthodox-judaism hiwi-al-balkhi judaism self-deprecation jewishness heretics messiah atheism jews	Christopher Hitchens
705b908	We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically: the disagreement between Professor Stephen Jay Gould and Professor Richard Dawkins, concerning "punctuated evolution" and the unfilled gaps in post- Darwinian theory, is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shall resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual..		Christopher Hitchens
4dc4a38	Gore Vidal, for instance, once languidly told me that one should never miss a chance either to have sex or to appear on television. My efforts to live up to this maxim have mainly resulted in my passing many unglamorous hours on off-peak cable TV. It was actually Vidal's great foe William F. Buckley who launched my part-time television career, by inviting me on to when I was still quite young, and giving me one of the American Right's les..	sex literature illusion television cable-television cable-television-in-the-us conservatism-in-the-us gore-vidal william-f-buckley conservatism united-states perception guilt	Christopher Hitchens
3da42b7	One of my first reservations about Zionism was and is that, semiconsciously at least, it grants the anti-Semite's first premise about the abnormality of the Jew.	zionism jews	Christopher Hitchens
9e8a071	Created sick, and then commanded to be well." This is one of the first, easiest, and most obvious of the satirical maxims that eventually lay waste to the illusion of faith."		Christopher Hitchens
358ccc2	Mrs. Clinton, speaking to a black church audience on Martin Luther King Day last year, did describe President George W. Bush as treating the Congress of the United States like 'a plantation,' adding in a significant tone of voice that 'you	racism politics african-americans plantation barack-obama martin-luther-king-jr hillary-clinton iowa new-hampshire united-states-elections-2008 george-w-bush united-states hypocrisy	Christopher Hitchens
d372713	I was near-delirious. Gazing up at the pillared skyline, I knew that I was surveying a tremendous work of man. Buying myself a drink in the smaller warrens below, in all their ethnic variety (and willingness to keep odd and late hours, and provide plentiful ice cubes, and in contrast to English parsimony in these matters), I felt the same thing in a different way. The balance between the macro and the micro, the heroic scale and the human..	new-york	Christopher Hitchens
c77ddc7	There is a noticeable element of the pathological in some current leftist critiques, which I tend to attribute to feelings of guilt allied to feelings of impotence. Not an attractive combination, because it results in self-hatred.	impotence pathology war-on-terror iraq-war self-hatred leftism guilt psychology	Christopher Hitchens
7eff9ca	Call no man lucky until he is dead, but there have been moment of rare satisfaction in the often random and fragmented life of the radical freelance scribbler. I have lived to see Ronald Reagan called "a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda" by his former idolators; to see the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union regarded with fear and suspicion by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (which blacked out an interview ..	television freedom milos-forman postcolonialism ronald-reagan moscow czechoslovakia despotism liberation zimbabwe mao-zedong journalism dictatorship spain soviet-union united-states propaganda colonialism russia communism greece cold-war	Christopher Hitchens
f931067	Every article and review and book that I have ever published has constituted an appeal to the person or persons to whom I should have talked before I dared to write it. I never launch any little essay without the hope--and the fear, because the encounter may also be embarrassing--that I shall draw a letter that begins, 'Dear Mr. Hitchens, it seems that you are unaware that...' It is in this sense that authorship is collaborative with 'the r..	writing books authorship book-reviews collaboration essays readers writers	Christopher Hitchens
5f77319	Travel in contested territory. Hard-working writing and reading when safely home, in the knowledge that an amusing friend is later coming to dinner.	travel reading writing friends	Christopher Hitchens
4e9935f	Re-reading a collection of my stuff, I was rather startled to find that it was 'perhaps.	words writing uncertainty	Christopher Hitchens
2a70ae1	I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in power. This snuff-movie opens with a plenary session of the Ba'ath Party central committee: perhaps a hundred men. Suddenly the doors are locked and Saddam, in the chair, announces a special session. Into the room is dragged an obviously broken man, who begins to emit a robotic confession of treason and subversion, that he sobs has been instig..	ba-athism beria cull himmler ba-athist-iraq conspiracy saddam-hussein dictatorship execution film syria torture	Christopher Hitchens
1e54d80	Created sick, and then commanded to be well." This is one of the first, easiest, and most obvious of the satirical maxims that eventually lay waste to the illusion of faith." --		Christopher Hitchens
ad3311c	It's normally agreed that the question "How are you?" doesn't put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer. So when asked these days, I tend to say something cryptic like, "A bit early to say." (If it's the wonderful staff at my oncology clinic who inquire, I sometimes go so far as to respond, "I seem to have cancer today.") Nobody wants to be told about the countless minor horrors and humiliations that become facts of "life" when y..		Christopher Hitchens
575771c	If we stay with animal analogies for a moment, owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are god. (Cats may sometimes share the cold entrails of a kill with you, but this is just what a god might..	dogs god	Christopher Hitchens
a443da1	For the party of order, disorder has always had its uses.		Christopher Hitchens
79d7ae9	Americanism in all its forms seemed to be trashy and wasteful and crude, even brutal. There was a metaphor ready to hand in my native Hampshire. Until some time after the war, the squirrels of England had been red. I can still vaguely remember these sweet Beatrix Potter-type creatures, smaller and prettier and more agile and lacking the rat-like features that disclose themselves when you get close to a gray squirrel. These latter riffraff, ..	squirrels united-states	Christopher Hitchens
1aef9a5	Normally, anything done in the name of 'the kids' strikes me as either slightly sentimental or faintly sinister--that redolence of moral blackmail that adheres to certain charitable appeals and certain kinds of politician. (Not for nothing is baby-kissing the synonym for public insincerity.)	moral-blackmail insincerity politicians sentimentality children censorship	Christopher Hitchens
f82fd3a	At a lunchtime reception for the diplomatic corps in Washington, given the day before the inauguration of Barack Obama as president, I was approached by a good-looking man who extended his hand. 'We once met many years ago,' he said. 'And you knew and befriended my father.' My mind emptied, as so often happens on such occasions. I had to inform him that he had the advantage of me. 'My name is Hector Timerman. I am the ambassador of Argentin..	human-rights death-squads jacobo-timerman henry-kissinger jorge-rafael-videla	Christopher Hitchens
39340ab	You've heard it all right. People don't have cancer: They are reported to be battling cancer.		Christopher Hitchens
1d9f431	James Madison, the author of the First Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any law respecting an establishment of religion, was also an author of Article VI, which states unambiguously that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust." His later Detached Memoranda make it very plain that he opposed the government appointment of chaplains in the first place, either in the armed forces or ..		Christopher Hitchens
bc8249b	Brave? Hah! Save it for a fight you can't run away from.		Christopher Hitchens
6408119	Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have become both more accurate and more honest--fractionally more brave, one might say--about that 'other' cleansing of the regions and peoples that were ground to atoms between the upper and nether millstones of Hitlerism and Stalinism. One of the most objective chroniclers is Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University. In his view, it is still 'Operation Reinhardt,' or the planned des..	prejudice racism history bravery honesty accuracy belarus berlin-wall operation-reinhard polish-jews slavic-peoples timothy-d-snyder yale-university national-socialism massacre historians ukraine poland holocaust nazism stalinism antisemitism jews russia	Christopher Hitchens
0296457	I am sorry for those who have never had the experience of seeing the victory of a national liberation movement, and I feel cold contempt for those who jeer at it.	antiwar liberation iraq iraq-war liberty	Christopher Hitchens
b12fa49	The brief answer is that I have become inured without becoming indifferent.		Christopher Hitchens
abdcc27	It is a terrible thing to feel sorry for one's mother or indeed father. And it's an additionally awful thing to feel this and to know the impotence of the adolescent to do anything at all about it. Worse still, perhaps, is the selfish consolation that it isn't really one's job to rear one's parents.		Christopher Hitchens
b45434a	If you care about the points of agreement and civility, then, you had better be well-equipped with points of argument and combativity, because if you are not then the "center" will be occupied and defined without your having helped to decide it, or determine what and where it is."		Christopher Hitchens
01bedc9	Of course what I'm about to share isn't true for me but... Friends, somebody said, are "god's apology for relations." (p. 129)"	friends family death	Christopher Hitchens
6bcd822	Seeing the name in a headline last week--a headline about a life that had involved real achievement--I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995--the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy 'experience'--Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly in..	lies politics 1995 2006 asia edmund-hillary first-lady first-lady-of-the-united-states jennifer-hanley mount-everest nepal tenzing-norgay united-states-senate foreign-policy 2008 hillary-clinton united-states-elections-2008 bill-clinton 1953 united-states celebrity new-york	Christopher Hitchens

Everything I love: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression.

Christopher Hitchens

fd0661d

Just to give you an idea, Proust's reply was 'To be separated from Mama.') I think that the lowest depth of misery ought to be distinguished from the highest pitch of anguish. In the lower depths come enforced idleness, sexual boredom, and/or impotence. At the highest pitch, the death of a friend or even the fear of the death of a child.

sex friends fear death proust-questionnaire impotence mothers idleness proust misery children

Christopher Hitchens

00256ef

To the ones that arise from urgent material needs.

sympathy materialism

Christopher Hitchens

fa48200

Religions and states and classes and tribes and nations do not have to work or argue for their adherents and subjects. They more or less inherit them. Against this unearned patrimony there have always been speakers and writers who embody Einstein's injunction to 'remember your humanity and forget the rest.' It would be immodest to claim membership in this fraternity/sorority, but I hope not to have done anything to outrage it. Despite the i..

politics religion internationalism libertarianism social-class atheism secularism

Christopher Hitchens

924bca0

T]hose who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes.

cyprus-dispute makarios-iii henry-kissinger moral-responsibility guilt greece

Christopher Hitchens

71c07e9

As he defended the book one evening in the early 1980s at the Carnegie Endowment in New York, I knew that some of what he said was true enough, just as some of it was arguably less so. (Edward incautiously dismissed 'speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings or sabotage commercial airliners' as the feverish product of 'highly exaggerated stereotypes.') took as its point of departure the Iranian revolution, which by the..

human-rights women iran amputation carnegie-endowment covering-islam iranian-kurdistan iranian-revolution khomeini mohammed-reza-pahlavi shiism stoning women-and-religion women-in-iran women-in-islam theocracy september-11-attacks middle-east edward-said media womens-rights new-york

Christopher Hitchens

12e277f

Edward genially enough did not agree with what I said, but he didn't seem to admit my point, either. I wanted to press him harder so I veered close enough to the to point out that his life--the life of the mind, the life of the book collector and music lover and indeed of the gallery-goer, appreciator of the feminine and occasional --would become simply unlivable and unthinkable in an Islamic republic. Again, he could accede politely to..

feminism books music 1986 ad-hominem bernard-lewis first-intifada interview-magazine intifada islamic-republic leon-wieseltier middle-eastern-studies intellectualism theocracy cambridge arafat israeli-palestinian-conflict middle-east debate edward-said art palestine palestinians

Christopher Hitchens

7ac2ce6

I resolutely refuse to believe that the state of Edward's health had anything to do with this, and I don't say this only because I was once later accused of attacking him 'on his deathbed.' He was entirely lucid to the end, and the positions he took were easily recognizable by me as extensions or outgrowths of views he had expressed (and also declined to express) in the past. Alas, it is true that he was closer to the end than anybody knew ..

jane-austen prejudice fitzwilliam-darcy house-of-saud iraqis mendacity national-museum-of-iraq orientalism-book race-card the-atlantic vandalism pride-and-prejudice george-w-bush iraq iraq-war edward-said imperialism united-states cowardice london

Christopher Hitchens

9b3cc78

On my desk is an appeal from the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. It asks me to become a sponsor and donor of this soon-to-be-opened institution, while an accompanying leaflet has enticing photographs of Bob Dylan, Betty Friedan, Sandy Koufax, Irving Berlin, Estee Lauder, Barbra Streisand, Albert Einstein, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. There is something faintly about this, as there is in the habit of those Jewish ..

american-jews armenian-genocide armenians barbra-streisand betty-friedan britons estee-lauder gypsies irving-berlin isaac-bashevis-singer philadelphia sandy-koufax romans bob-dylan british-isles bigotry united-states race antisemitism jews

Christopher Hitchens

5b5515e

Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the locals really believe what they are told, and do they truly revere Fat Man and Little Boy? I have been a visiting writer in several authoritarian and totalitarian states, and usually the question answers itself. Someone in a cafe makes an offhand remark. A piece of ironic graffiti is scrawled in the men's room. Some group at the university issu..

irony grief death doublethink drinking-the-kool-aid graffiti jonestown koreans moonies ryugyong-hotel jokes indoctrination surveillance dissent totalitarianism tourism-in-north-korea south-korea authoritarianism pyongyang kim-il-sung kim-jong-il north-korea propaganda mind-control university

Christopher Hitchens

732aa00

the religion which treats its flock as a credulous plaything offers one of the cruelest spectacles that can be imagined: a human being in fear and doubt who is openly exploited to believe in the impossible

Christopher Hitchens

72bc4c7

Periclean Greeks employed the term , without any connotation of stupidity or subnormality, to mean simply 'a person indifferent to public affairs.' Obviously, there is something wanting in the apolitical personality. But we have also come to suspect the idiocy of politicization--of the professional pol and power broker. The two idiocies make a perfect match, with the apathy of the first permitting the depredations of the second.

politics apolitical athens pericles politics-of-the-united-states

Christopher Hitchens

2d02831

If I were to announce that I had suddenly converted to Catholicism, I know that Larry Taunton and Douglas Wilson would feel I had fallen into grievous error. On the other hand, if I were to join either of their Protestant evangelical groups, the followers of Rome would not think my soul was much safer than it is now, while a late-in-life decision to adhere to Judaism or Islam would inevitably lose me many prayers from both factions. I sympa..

Christopher Hitchens

191d11e

O]ne has to have endured a few decades before wanting, let alone needing, to embark on the project of recovering lost life. And I think it may be possible to review 'the chronicles of wasted time.' William Morris wrote in that men fight for things and then lose the battle, only to win it again in a shape and form that they had not expected, and then be compelled again to defend it under another name. We are all of us very good at self-per..

history life battles hegel self-persuasion william-morris self-delusion reminiscence

Christopher Hitchens

8c86c38

One notorious named Hiwa al-Balkhi, writing in ninth-century Persia, offered two hundred awkward questions to the faithful. He drew upon himself the usual thunderous curses--'may his name be forgotten, may his bones be worn to nothing'--along with detailed refutations and denunciations by Abraham ibn Ezra and others. These exciting anathemas, of course, ensured that his worrying 'questions' would remain current for as long as the Orthodox..

irony religion curses maimonides orthodox-judaism hiwi-al-balkhi judaism self-deprecation jewishness heretics messiah atheism jews

Christopher Hitchens

705b908

We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically: the disagreement between Professor Stephen Jay Gould and Professor Richard Dawkins, concerning "punctuated evolution" and the unfilled gaps in post- Darwinian theory, is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shall resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual..

Christopher Hitchens

4dc4a38

Gore Vidal, for instance, once languidly told me that one should never miss a chance either to have sex or to appear on television. My efforts to live up to this maxim have mainly resulted in my passing many unglamorous hours on off-peak cable TV. It was actually Vidal's great foe William F. Buckley who launched my part-time television career, by inviting me on to when I was still quite young, and giving me one of the American Right's les..

sex literature illusion television cable-television cable-television-in-the-us conservatism-in-the-us gore-vidal william-f-buckley conservatism united-states perception guilt

Christopher Hitchens

3da42b7

One of my first reservations about Zionism was and is that, semiconsciously at least, it grants the anti-Semite's first premise about the abnormality of the Jew.

zionism jews

Christopher Hitchens

9e8a071

Created sick, and then commanded to be well." This is one of the first, easiest, and most obvious of the satirical maxims that eventually lay waste to the illusion of faith."

Christopher Hitchens

358ccc2

Mrs. Clinton, speaking to a black church audience on Martin Luther King Day last year, did describe President George W. Bush as treating the Congress of the United States like 'a plantation,' adding in a significant tone of voice that 'you

racism politics african-americans plantation barack-obama martin-luther-king-jr hillary-clinton iowa new-hampshire united-states-elections-2008 george-w-bush united-states hypocrisy

Christopher Hitchens

d372713

I was near-delirious. Gazing up at the pillared skyline, I knew that I was surveying a tremendous work of man. Buying myself a drink in the smaller warrens below, in all their ethnic variety (and willingness to keep odd and late hours, and provide plentiful ice cubes, and in contrast to English parsimony in these matters), I felt the same thing in a different way. The balance between the macro and the micro, the heroic scale and the human..

new-york

Christopher Hitchens

c77ddc7

There is a noticeable element of the pathological in some current leftist critiques, which I tend to attribute to feelings of guilt allied to feelings of impotence. Not an attractive combination, because it results in self-hatred.

impotence pathology war-on-terror iraq-war self-hatred leftism guilt psychology

Christopher Hitchens

7eff9ca

Call no man lucky until he is dead, but there have been moment of rare satisfaction in the often random and fragmented life of the radical freelance scribbler. I have lived to see Ronald Reagan called "a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda" by his former idolators; to see the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union regarded with fear and suspicion by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (which blacked out an interview ..

television freedom milos-forman postcolonialism ronald-reagan moscow czechoslovakia despotism liberation zimbabwe mao-zedong journalism dictatorship spain soviet-union united-states propaganda colonialism russia communism greece cold-war

Christopher Hitchens

f931067

Every article and review and book that I have ever published has constituted an appeal to the person or persons to whom I should have talked before I dared to write it. I never launch any little essay without the hope--and the fear, because the encounter may also be embarrassing--that I shall draw a letter that begins, 'Dear Mr. Hitchens, it seems that you are unaware that...' It is in this sense that authorship is collaborative with 'the r..

writing books authorship book-reviews collaboration essays readers writers

Christopher Hitchens

5f77319

Travel in contested territory. Hard-working writing and reading when safely home, in the knowledge that an amusing friend is later coming to dinner.

travel reading writing friends

Christopher Hitchens

4e9935f

Re-reading a collection of my stuff, I was rather startled to find that it was 'perhaps.

words writing uncertainty

Christopher Hitchens

2a70ae1

I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in power. This snuff-movie opens with a plenary session of the Ba'ath Party central committee: perhaps a hundred men. Suddenly the doors are locked and Saddam, in the chair, announces a special session. Into the room is dragged an obviously broken man, who begins to emit a robotic confession of treason and subversion, that he sobs has been instig..

ba-athism beria cull himmler ba-athist-iraq conspiracy saddam-hussein dictatorship execution film syria torture

Christopher Hitchens

1e54d80

Created sick, and then commanded to be well." This is one of the first, easiest, and most obvious of the satirical maxims that eventually lay waste to the illusion of faith." --

Christopher Hitchens

ad3311c

It's normally agreed that the question "How are you?" doesn't put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer. So when asked these days, I tend to say something cryptic like, "A bit early to say." (If it's the wonderful staff at my oncology clinic who inquire, I sometimes go so far as to respond, "I seem to have cancer today.") Nobody wants to be told about the countless minor horrors and humiliations that become facts of "life" when y..

Christopher Hitchens

575771c

If we stay with animal analogies for a moment, owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are god. (Cats may sometimes share the cold entrails of a kill with you, but this is just what a god might..

dogs god

Christopher Hitchens

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For the party of order, disorder has always had its uses.

Christopher Hitchens

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Americanism in all its forms seemed to be trashy and wasteful and crude, even brutal. There was a metaphor ready to hand in my native Hampshire. Until some time after the war, the squirrels of England had been red. I can still vaguely remember these sweet Beatrix Potter-type creatures, smaller and prettier and more agile and lacking the rat-like features that disclose themselves when you get close to a gray squirrel. These latter riffraff, ..

squirrels united-states

Christopher Hitchens

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Normally, anything done in the name of 'the kids' strikes me as either slightly sentimental or faintly sinister--that redolence of moral blackmail that adheres to certain charitable appeals and certain kinds of politician. (Not for nothing is baby-kissing the synonym for public insincerity.)

moral-blackmail insincerity politicians sentimentality children censorship

Christopher Hitchens

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At a lunchtime reception for the diplomatic corps in Washington, given the day before the inauguration of Barack Obama as president, I was approached by a good-looking man who extended his hand. 'We once met many years ago,' he said. 'And you knew and befriended my father.' My mind emptied, as so often happens on such occasions. I had to inform him that he had the advantage of me. 'My name is Hector Timerman. I am the ambassador of Argentin..

human-rights death-squads jacobo-timerman henry-kissinger jorge-rafael-videla

Christopher Hitchens

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You've heard it all right. People don't have cancer: They are reported to be battling cancer.

Christopher Hitchens

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James Madison, the author of the First Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any law respecting an establishment of religion, was also an author of Article VI, which states unambiguously that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust." His later Detached Memoranda make it very plain that he opposed the government appointment of chaplains in the first place, either in the armed forces or ..

Christopher Hitchens

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Brave? Hah! Save it for a fight you can't run away from.

Christopher Hitchens

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Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have become both more accurate and more honest--fractionally more brave, one might say--about that 'other' cleansing of the regions and peoples that were ground to atoms between the upper and nether millstones of Hitlerism and Stalinism. One of the most objective chroniclers is Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University. In his view, it is still 'Operation Reinhardt,' or the planned des..

prejudice racism history bravery honesty accuracy belarus berlin-wall operation-reinhard polish-jews slavic-peoples timothy-d-snyder yale-university national-socialism massacre historians ukraine poland holocaust nazism stalinism antisemitism jews russia

Christopher Hitchens

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I am sorry for those who have never had the experience of seeing the victory of a national liberation movement, and I feel cold contempt for those who jeer at it.

antiwar liberation iraq iraq-war liberty

Christopher Hitchens

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The brief answer is that I have become inured without becoming indifferent.

Christopher Hitchens

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It is a terrible thing to feel sorry for one's mother or indeed father. And it's an additionally awful thing to feel this and to know the impotence of the adolescent to do anything at all about it. Worse still, perhaps, is the selfish consolation that it isn't really one's job to rear one's parents.

Christopher Hitchens

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If you care about the points of agreement and civility, then, you had better be well-equipped with points of argument and combativity, because if you are not then the "center" will be occupied and defined without your having helped to decide it, or determine what and where it is."

Christopher Hitchens

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Of course what I'm about to share isn't true for me but... Friends, somebody said, are "god's apology for relations." (p. 129)"

friends family death

Christopher Hitchens

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Seeing the name in a headline last week--a headline about a life that had involved real achievement--I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995--the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy 'experience'--Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly in..

lies politics 1995 2006 asia edmund-hillary first-lady first-lady-of-the-united-states jennifer-hanley mount-everest nepal tenzing-norgay united-states-senate foreign-policy 2008 hillary-clinton united-states-elections-2008 bill-clinton 1953 united-states celebrity new-york

Christopher Hitchens