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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
be5a33f	There should be philosophy and knowledge for the elect, religion and sentimentality for the masses			Christopher Hitchens
5dfaa21	Who would be so base as to pick on a wizened, shriveled old lady, well stricken in years, who has consecrated her entire life to the needy and the destitute? On the other hand, who would be so incurious as to leave unexamined the influence and motives of a woman who once boasted of operating more than five hundred convents in upward of 105 countries--"without counting India"? Lone self-sacrificing zealot, or chair of a missionary multinatio..			Christopher Hitchens
94f1065	If anyone's interested in the alleviation of poverty...			Christopher Hitchens
fb47ebc	The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn't precisely one of the things that engages you, often at first without your noticing it. A good conversation is the only human equivalent: the realizing that decent points are being made and understood, that irony is in play, and elaboration, and that a dull or obvious remark would b..			Christopher Hitchens
1c1d870	It was sometimes feebly argued, as the political and military war against this enemy ran into difficulties, that it was 'a war without end.' I never saw the point of this plaintive objection. The war against superstition and the totalitarian mentality is an endless war. In protean forms, it is fought and refought in every country and every generation. In bin Ladenism we confront again the awful combination of the highly authoritarian person..		war bertold-brecht nihilism osama-bin-laden war-in-afghanistan-2001 totalitarianism authoritarianism war-on-terror islamism superstition	Christopher Hitchens
2305eee	It was well said--by Jean Tarrou in The Plague, I think--that attendance at lectures in an unknown language will help to hone one's awareness of the exceedingly slow passage of time. I once had the experience of being 'waterboarded' and can now dimly appreciate how much every second counts in the experience of the torture victim, forced to go on enduring what is unendurable.		waterboarding torture	Christopher Hitchens
5bb7371	A note on language. Be even more suspicious than I was just telling you to be, of all those who employ the term "we" or "us" without your permission. This is another form of surreptitious conscription, designed to suggest that "we" are all agreed on "our" interests and identity. Populist authoritarians try to slip it past you; so do some kinds of literary critics ("our sensibilities are enraged...") Always ask who this "we" is; as often as ..		politics surveillance language populism	Christopher Hitchens
5028a7e	My little ankle-strap sandals curled with embarrassment for her.			Christopher Hitchens
15375ff	It's difficult to take oneself with sufficient seriousness to begin any sentence with the words "Thou shalt not." But who cannot summon the confidence to say: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature--why w..			Christopher Hitchens
27faf96	Religion poisons everything.			Christopher Hitchens
75bb0e0	But there is a reason why religions insist so much on strange events in the sky, as well as on less quantifiable phenomena such as dreams and visions. All of these things cater to our inborn stupidity, and our willingness to be persuaded against all the evidence that we are indeed the center of the universe and that everything is arranged with us in mind.			Christopher Hitchens
862380a	The friends of Galtieri, Saddam Hussein, Mullah Omar and Milosevic make unconvincing defenders of humanitarian values, and it can be seen that their inept and sometimes inane arguments lack either the principles or the seriousness that are required in such debates.		pacifism leftism	Christopher Hitchens
7db9867	Yet isn't it all--all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga--exactly like that? And isn't some of it a little bit more serious? For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her 'greatness' (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with whi..		lies sex politics ambition 2008 expediency hillary-clinton iowa iowa-caucuses new-hampshire new-hampshire-primary self-promotion united-states-elections-2008 bill-clinton iraq iraq-war united-states greatness	Christopher Hitchens
f6a0672	It would be nice to think that the menacing aspects of North Korea were for display also, that the bombs and reactors were Potemkin showcases or bargaining chips. On the plane from Beijing I met a group of unsmiling Texan types wearing baseball caps. They were the 'in-country' team from the International Atomic Energy Agency, there to inspect and neutralize North Korea's plutonium rods. Not a nice job, but, as they say, someone has to do it..		baseball-caps beijing bombs iaea north-korea-and-wmd nyongbyon plutonium nuclear-weapons texas north-korea china	Christopher Hitchens
ec86f7a	It's difficult to take oneself with sufficient seriousness to begin any sentence with the words "Thou shalt not." But who cannot summon the confidence to say: Do not condemn people on the basis of their ethnicity or color. Do not ever use people as private property. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature--why w..			Christopher Hitchens
52258ed	I began the project of judging Mother Teresa's reputation by her actions and words rather than her actions and words by her reputation.			Christopher Hitchens
caa8cff	Our near absolute dominion over nature has, however, confronted us with one brilliant and ironic and inescapable insight. The decryption of DNA is not only useful in putting a merciful but overdue end to theories of creationism and racism but also enlightening in instructing us that we are ourselves animals.			Christopher Hitchens
14b5182	It has been said that alcohol is a good servant and a bad master. Nice try. The plain fact is that it makes other people, and indeed life itself, a good deal less boring.			Christopher Hitchens
814e66d	The human species is an animal species without very much variation within it, and it is idle and futile to imagine that a voyage to Tibet, say, will discover an entirely different harmony with nature or eternity.			Christopher Hitchens
c09d809	Once again it is demonstrated that people do not love their chains or their jailers,-and that the aspiration for a civilized life - that "universal eligibility to be noble," as Saul Bellow's Augie March so imperishably phrases it - is proper and common to all."			Christopher Hitchens
03d18ac	With alcoholic ritual, the whole point is generosity. If you open a bottle of wine, for heaven's sake have the grace to throw away the damn cork.			Christopher Hitchens
8f1034f	As he grew older, which was mostly in my absence, my firstborn son, Alexander, became ever more humorous and courageous. There came a time, as the confrontation with the enemies of our civilization became more acute, when he sent off various applications to enlist in the armed forces. I didn't want to be involved in this decision either way, especially since I was being regularly taunted for not having 'sent' any of my children to fight in ..		fathers war humour courage morality civilisation iraq war-on-terror iraq-war sons enemies resistance	Christopher Hitchens
2d8f7a3	Reading his autobiography many years later, I was astonished to find that Edward since boyhood had--not unlike Isaiah Berlin--often felt himself ungainly and ill-favored and awkward in bearing. He had always seemed to me quite the reverse: a touch dandyish perhaps but--as the saying goes--perfectly secure in his masculinity. On one occasion, after lunch in Georgetown, he took me with him to a renowned local tobacconist and asked to do somet..		autobiography carol-blue georgetown-washington heterosexuality museum-of-modern-art pipes purses stanford edward-said manhattan masculinity self-confidence shyness smoking	Christopher Hitchens
2c31d73	Kilmartin wrote a highly amusing and illuminating account of his experience as a Proust revisionist, which appeared in the first issue of Ben Sonnenberg's quarterly in the autumn of 1981. The essay opened with a kind of encouragement: 'There used to be a story that discerning Frenchmen preferred to read Marcel Proust in English on the grounds that the prose of was deeply un-French and heavily influenced by English writers such as Ruskin..		ben-sonnenberg essays french-people grand-street-magazine in-search-of-lost-time john-ruskin marcel-proust revisionism snobbery terence-kilmartin english french paris	Christopher Hitchens
48f7b0c	The United States finds itself with forces of reaction. Do I have to demonstrate this? The Taliban's annihilation of music and culture? The enslavement of women?		women music taliban jihad war-on-terror terrorism united-states islam islamism	Christopher Hitchens
8023e68	Remember that it is 'free-thinking Jews,' not Jews as such, who are defined as the undesirables by T.S. Eliot in .		free-thought ts-eliot antisemitism jews	Christopher Hitchens
f0ebb25	It would not be an exaggeration to say that the land question in Zimbabwe is the single most decisive one.		politics land-reform land-reform-in-zimbabwe prescience zimbabwe land	Christopher Hitchens
808f52c	The point of protesting about 'moral equivalence' is surely not to blur moral choices on 'our side'. Is it?		morality moral-equivalence	Christopher Hitchens
9fb6046	A note on language. Be even more suspicious than I was just telling you to be, of all those who employ the term "we" or "us" without your permission. This is another form of surreptitious conscription, designed to suggest that "we" are all agreed on "our" interests and identity. Populist authoritarians try to slip it past you; so do some kinds of literary critics ("our sensibilities are enraged...") Always ask who this "we" is; as often as ..		politics surveillance language populism	Christopher Hitchens
1d47ade	Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.			Christopher Hitchens
8cf7e84	You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.			Christopher Hitchens
65cfbc5	Very often, people embarking on such guesswork make the vulgar assumption that the lower the motives, the more likely they are to be authentic.		motives misunderstanding	Christopher Hitchens
61828b5	What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. This is even more true when the "evidence" eventually offered is so shoddy and self-interested."			Christopher Hitchens
697fa8d	As the great Eugene Debs used to tell his socialist voters in the 1912 election campaign, he would not lead them into a Promised Land even if he could, because if they were trusting enough to be led in, they would be trusting enough to be led out again. He urged them, in other words, to do their own thinking.			Christopher Hitchens
3ae798f	I was extremely shy of approaching my hero but he, as I found out, was sorely in need of company. By then almost completely blind, he was claustrated and even a little confused and this may help explain the rather shocking attitude that he took to the blunt trauma that was being inflicted in the streets and squares around him. ' ' he intoned to me when the topic first came up, as it had to: ' ' This couplet he claimed (I have never been abl..		bawd edmund-blunden evelyn-waugh jorge-rafael-videla juan-peron lingustics jorge-luis-borges	Christopher Hitchens
b1eba03	I have had my mother's wing of my genetic ancestry analyzed by the tracing service and there it all is: the arrow moving northward from the African savannah, skirting the Mediterranean by way of the Levant, and passing through Eastern and Central Europe before crossing to the British Isles. And all of this knowable by an analysis of the cells on the inside of my mouth. I almost prefer the more rambling and indirect and journalistic invest..		history determinism british-isles central-europe eastern-europe genealogy genetics investigation levant mediterranean-sea national-geographic savanna sub-saharan-africa journalism ancestry	Christopher Hitchens
ccc0f2b	It's no fun to appreciate to the full the truth of the materialist proposition that I don't have a body, I am a body.			Christopher Hitchens
5961d05	Have a lived life instead of a career. Put yourself in the safekeeping of good taste. Lived freedom will compensate you for a few losses. . . . If you don't like the style of others, cultivate your own. Get to know the tricks of reproduction, be a self-publisher even in conversation, and then the joy of working can fill your days.			Christopher Hitchens
5875386	I had not particularly liked the way in which he wrote about literature in , and I was always on my guard if not outright hostile when any tincture of 'deconstruction' or 'postmodernism' was applied to my beloved canon of English writing, but when Edward talked about English literature and quoted from it, he passed the test that I always privately apply: Do you truly this subject and could you bear to live for one moment if it was oblite..		literature edward-said postmodernism literary-criticism	Christopher Hitchens
1610474	In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed.		irony losers minorities outsiders oppression	Christopher Hitchens
e04ba61	And how easy it is to recognize the revenant shapes that the old unchanging enemies--racism, leader worship, superstition--assume when they reappear amongst us (often bodyguarded by their new apologists).		racism liberalism superstition	Christopher Hitchens
59a8c03	Any critique of realism must begin with a sober assessment of the horrors of peace.		noninterventionism realpolitik sudan	Christopher Hitchens
c4eeb7e	In whatever kind of a "race" life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist."			Christopher Hitchens
55b4b4d	Inevitably came the time when he angrily repudiated his former paladin Yasser Arafat. In fact, he described him to me as 'the Palestinian blend of Marshal Petain and Papa Doc.' But the main problem, alas, remained the same. In Edward's moral universe, Arafat could at last be named as a thug and a practitioner of corruption and extortion. But he could only be identified as such to the extent that he was now and at last aligned with an Americ..		arafat bill-clinton christians extortion george-stephanopoulos israeli-palestinian-conflict ohio philippe-petain vox-populi white-house yitzhak-rabin edward-said united-states corruption francois-duvalier arabs territory new-york	Christopher Hitchens

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