One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human pre-history where nobody – not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms – had the smallest idea what was going on.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENSI’m an atheist. I’m not neutral about religion, I’m hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself.
More Christopher Hitchens Quotes
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Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of ‘the flock.
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High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.
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Philosophy begins where religion ends, just as by analogy chemistry begins where alchemy runs out, and astronomy takes the place of astrology.
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To ‘choose’ dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.
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Those who are determined to be ‘offended’ will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt.
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The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.
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I say that homosexuality is not just a form of sex, it’s a form of love, and it deserves our respect for that reason.
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It is only those who hope to transform human beings who end up by burning them, like the waste product of a failed experiment.
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I am absolutely convinced that religion is the main source of hatred in this world.
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What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.
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What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
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How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.
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The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.
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The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths.
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The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.
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Religion is not the belief there is a god. Religion is the belief god tells you what to do.
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Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.
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The noble title of “dissident” must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.
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I’m a member of no party. I have no ideology. I’m a rationalist. I do what I can in the international struggle between science and reason and the barbarism, superstition and stupidity that’s all around us.
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She’s got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director.
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Jesus makes large claims for his heavenly father but never mentions that his mother is or was a virgin, and is repeatedly very rude and coarse to her when she makes an appearance.
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I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.
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The gods that we’ve made are exactly the gods you’d expect to be made by a species that’s about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee.
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Who are your favourite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.
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I’m not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.
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Take the risk of thinking for yourself.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS