“I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people’s hope.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It’s a battle you can’t hope to win – it’s a battle that’s going to go on forever. It’s part of the human condition.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“The penalty for getting mugged in an American city and losing your ID is that you can’t fly home.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don’t think anyone in my family would really feel I’d done them an injustice by saying that. We didn’t see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“WASP’ is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it’s inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“I think the materialist conception of history is valid.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“When I meet people who say – which they do all of the time – ‘I must just tell you, my great aunt had cancer of the elbow and the doctors gave her 10 seconds to live, but last I heard she was climbing Mount Everest,’ and so forth, I switch off quite early.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of people like me is its generosity, to put it simply.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“Well, we can’t say any more than we can say there is no god, there is no afterlife. We can only say there is no persuasive evidence for or argument for it.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“Well, I’ll put it this way: you can certainly say belief in God makes people behave worse. That can be proved beyond a doubt.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“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 affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“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 affection, they draw the conclusion that they are God.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don’t think anyone in my family would really feel I’d done them an injustice by saying that. We didn’t see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“There’s been some research in cognitive science, I’m told, that discloses that there have always been perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people who are, as Pascal puts it, so made that they cannot believe. To us, when people talk about faith, it’s white noise.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“Trust is not the same as faith. A friend is someone you trust. Putting faith in anyone is a mistake.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“To ‘choose’ dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“To ‘choose’ dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have an agonising and horrible eternal life of torture, I say, ‘Well, good on you. See you there.’”
– Christopher Hitchens
“I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“It’s impossible, I think, however much I’d become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don’t think I’d ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“It’s impossible, I think, however much I’d become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don’t think I’d ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.”
– Christopher Hitchens
“Solidarity is an attitude of resistance, I suppose, or it should be.”
– Christopher Hitchens